Onettsons
by Cut Productions
Summary: Two best friends that share secrets. Two best friends that share secret powers. When these two friends are captured and separated, they will discover more about themselves then they dreamed possible. Their fate, along with the world's, is changed forever. AU
1. A Day in the Life of Lucas Aldabey

**Hey guys! This is Nacartor from Cut Productions! This is my first solo story. **

**Anyways, I got the idea for this story from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, collecting a little info on the Nintendo game series known as Mother or EarthBound. Eventually, I looked it up on the internet and found out some things that I used to develop this story some more, but SSBB is really where this came from. My story centers on two of the main characters from the series, Ness and Lucas.**

**Heads up: the story I am about to reveal is not anything like the actual storyline** **from the games.**

Rated Fiction T for violence and serious content (not inappropriate or vulgar in any way) that may not be suitable for young children.

_To God be the glory._

Onettsons

Chapter 1: A Day in the Life of Lucas Aldabey

The rain was falling. It was falling hard. In torrents. In sheets. In buckets. Harder than anyone in the small town had ever seen before. So hard, you could see nothing in the shower of pouring rain.

The thunder was just as bad. It seemed the huge storm-cloud from which the thunder emanated was having a war within itself, or maybe it was having a concert in it, withonly a very loud percussion section. The thunder boomed constantly, never stopping to take a breath. Besides that, it was loud. Extremely loud. So loud, that you could barely hear anything else.

Then there was the lightning. It was always flashing inside the cloud, threatening to strike out at any instant. And it did strike out, every few seconds, sometimes in the distance, sometimes close up, but always frightening.

And the wind! It seemed the angriest part of the storm. It seemed it was determined to soak everything with the rain. If any animal was unfortunate enough to hide under a tree, the wind would push the rain so that it fell diagonally on the poor creature. As long as the wind was there, anything that could be soaked would be soaked. And even through all the other noise in the night, the wind howled and moaned like ghosts in the tempest as it beat at everything in its way.

All these thoughts passed through Lucas Aldabey's mind as he stared out from his window into the raging night beyond.

The storm was a metaphor to him. It reminded him of how he felt when his mother-

"No. No. I _can't_ think about that." Said Lucas suddenly, trying to stop the oncoming thought that would bring back all the unpleasant memories he had tried so long and so hard to forget.

"_I'd better get some more sleep now,"_ Lucas told himself, trying to avoid the unwanted memories by means of distraction.

And with that, he forced himself into yet another troubled sleep.

…

"Lucas! It's time to get UP you little pile of lazy bones! If you don't start moving right now you're going to make ME late for school!"

Lucas awoke to the familiar sound of his sister's yelling voice that woke him up basically every morning.

"Come-ON!" his sister yelled at him as she swung open his door, "Get up or I'll get Dad! Dad-"

"Lucy! Lucy! Please! I'm getting up now! Please!" Lucas pleaded with her as he climbed out of his bed. "Please! Please! Don't get Dad."

"Alright, but hurry up!" Lucy replied as she started back to the kitchen.

Sighing, Lucas closed the door to his room and began getting ready for school all the while wondering why his sister wanted to get to school so badly. _"There's probably something happening at the bus stop,"_ he finally concluded as he ate his breakfast.

"Lucas!" Lucy shouted from the door.

"I'm coming!" Lucas cried as he hurriedly finished eating, put away his dishes, grabbed his backpack and scrambled out the door after his sister, who was already walking briskly down the sidewalk.

"Took you long enough," Lucy grumbled as he finally caught up with her, panting.

"Sorry," Lucas apologized to keep her from getting even madder at him then she already was. A few minutes later, he asked her cautiously and quietly, "So, what-what's happening at the bus-stop?"

Lucy turned suddenly to him in surprise which then turned in to offense.

"What? Uh, nothing. It's none of your business anyway."

"Oh, sorry."

Lucas noticed that Lucy had kind of stuttered the statement. This could only mean one thing. Whatever was going to happen at the bus stop was making her nervous. He decided not to bring it up any more and remained silent until they arrived at his bus stop.

Lucas was headed for the huddled, talking group of kids around the bus stop sign when he heard Lucy yell behind him, "Hey! You'll have to come home alone today, okay? Dad's working late, _again_, and I'll- I'll be busy."

"Oh, um, okay. B-bye…" Lucas trailed off as he watched his sister run away towards her own stop. He sighed, predicting that the rest of his day was going to go like the beginning of it had gone: not well.

"Hey, Luki!" Lucas' thoughts were interrupted by the familiar nick-name that only his best friend used.

"Hi, Ness!" replied Lucas, a smile on his face for the first time that day. "So, how's your day been so far?"

"Oh, fine. Yours?" answered the tall boy.

"Oh. Uh, well…" Lucas thought back over the course of the day. It definitely had not been 'fine' like Ness's.

Ness, detecting the uneasiness in his friend's voice, decided to change the subject. "It's okay. You ready for today?" he asked, referring to their big history test that afternoon.

"Yeah, I mean I hope so," Lucas replied uncertainly.

"Oh, come on! You're the best student in the whole class!" Ness encouraged him.

"It's not that," Lucas explained, "it's just that I, uh, didn't get that much sleep last night."

"Oh, did the storm keep you up last night too?" Ness asked.

"That," Lucas answered quietly, "and, other things…"

"Uh, okay." Said Ness, knowing that Lucas didn't want to talk about what the 'other things' were.

"Lucy was sure acting strange this morning." Said Lucas quickly, changing the subject.

"Are you sure that's strange at all?" Ness commented, raising an eyebrow.

"Come on, Ness!" Lucas began to scold him. He was very sensitive about anything that insulted anyone in any way. Though he did have to admit his friend's comment was accurate. "Don't-" he was suddenly interrupted by the commotion caused by the arrival of the school bus.

The two friends hurried over to the group that was filing into the bus. They boarded and walked to the back of the bus where they talked through the whole uneventful ride to school.

…

Lucas stepped off the bus and looked around. The sky was still filled with dark grey clouds, but sunlight managed to find its way through. The ground was waterlogged from the night before, so he guessed that they would have to have recess inside today.

Lucas continued musing as he did his best to avoid the soaking wet turf and the rush of children trying to fit in as much play as possible before the bell rang. His best efforts were unsuccessful though, so he (with his musing now interrupted) chose that avoiding people was more important than avoiding plants. In light of that decision, he quickly side-stepped into the driest patch of grass available to him.

As soon as Lucas moved from the sidewalk, his thoughts were interrupted by his name being called yet again.

"Lucas!" The voice was well known to him, but Lucas was always surprised when he heard it. He jerked around to see his friend, Janet, run by him with several other girls trailing behind her.

"Hi!" She said simply, waving as she sped past him.

"H-hey," the boy weakly responded. _"Great,"_ he scolded himself inwardly. _"I can't even say 'hey' to her properly."_

After the girls had gone, Lucas (with his thinking cap on as usual) pondered how he seriously needed to stop being so awkward around Janet, so that-

"So, who's you're girlfriend, Blondie?" interrupted a voice that made Lucas shudder in horror.

Gulping as he turned to face the inevitable, the blonde boy looked up and locked his blue eyes with the green eyes of 'Big Bob', or so he was nicknamed. The taller of the two grinned down darkly at the terrified face in front of him.

"I SAID, who's you're girlfriend?" the bully re-asked, this time neglecting the 'Blondie' insult. Lucas began quivering when he saw his persecutor's once-grinning face shift into an angry one. He gulped again as he franticly searched for a suitable answer. Settling quickly for the 'She's not my Girlfriend' response, Lucas opened his mouth to answer.

"She's not-" he began, but was cut off again, this time by the _'clangclangclangclang' _of the school bell. Turning to the sound that saved him, Lucas saw the first few students file into the red-bricked building. Big Bob also turned, an irritated frown on his face. He then turned back to his small captive.

"Alright, I'll let you off the hook this time. Buuuuut, come to think of it, I asked you a pretty tough question, at least for you," he sneered. "So, I'll give you to recess to come up with an answer." He walked off towards the obnoxious bell, the dark grin back on his face. "See you then."

Once again, Lucas gulped, going through the options of what his recess was going to look like, failing, though he tried, to see the silver lining in this upcoming cloud.

…

It was loud, sure, but that didn't stop him. He would prefer to be left alone in the perfect peace of nature, but, of course, even that was rare these days. So, he was content to sit quietly under his tree and read while the rest of the school ran about yelling, climbing, chasing, and anything else to occupy themselves.

As for Lucas, his book was fun enough. Animals were fascinating to him, and that was all this book was about. From their characteristics to their habitats to their predators and prey, the blonde boy couldn't get enough. He was completely immersed in its tales of migration and hibernation when a certain sound brought him back to the land of reality.

"So, Shrimp, do you have your answer for me?" said a voice that triggered the animal lover's memory like a bullet.

Nearly dropping the precious encyclopedia as he looked up, eyes wide with fear, scrambling to his feet, Lucas felt a fit of gulping attack his throat as he looked at his bully.

"R-Robert, I-"

"Forgot? Of course. I mean, what _else_ would _you_ do?" Robert was enjoying this. "Hmm? What else would you do Shrimp?" he pressed, seeing just how many questions he could put on the weaker boy's plate.

"I-I, uh, w-well, see I, uh, I-" oh, 'Big Bob' had hit the jackpot as Lucas stuttered and stumbled over his words. The evil grin found its way back on the bully's face as he saw this as a perfect opportunity to have what he addressed as 'fun'.

"Okay, okay, okay," the large student interrupted, his evil grin lingering on his face. "I asked you two questions, and you gave me zero answers," he continued, raising his voice to draw a crowd. "So! I guess you know what that means!" His plan had worked, for a few boys started to draw closer to the confrontation. Robert kept going, "Hmm, Lucas? What does that mean?"

Lucas, however, even with all that was at stake here, was not really paying attention. As for what was coming, he knew that before Big Bob even said it. Yet he wasn't trying to answer the bully's questions; he was trying to answer his own: _how do I escape? _Indeed, how could he escape? He could outrun, out-climb, and outsmart almost any opponent. But he had fallen into the perfect trap. He was against an old oak tree, and its lowest branches were still too high for him to reach. He would've made a run for it, but Big Bob was placed strategically in front of him, and that added to the gathering crowd completely canceled out his option of running away. He could try to trick the bully into leaving an opening, but that wasn't going to work. That left him with one other option: he could fight his way out, but that _definitely_ wasn't going to work. So, Lucas was ready to submit as Big Bob stepped toward him, having finished his monolog, and ready to get this beating underway.

Then, a totally unexpected sound broke in: clapping.

"Wow. That is the most manly thing I've ever seen in my entire _life_." Came a voice filled with sarcasm. And then, Lucas knew deliverance had come.

Everyone including Robert turned to see a tall red-capped boy leaning against the fence right outside of the half circle made up of boys and girls alike. He lifted his head and his brown eyes drilled right into Robert's with burning anger. But, however, burning anger that was totally in control. He walked through the line of students and stood between his best friend and his best friend's oppressor.

"I've got to hand it to ya; that was so not cowardly at all that I feel like I ought to thank you. So, guess I will."

"In your dreams runt. Out of my way!" came the retort as the bully brought his fist up, then down.

Ness easily side-stepped the clumsy attack, all the while giving his enemy quick jabs in the arm. "Come on! Someone as _manly_ as you has _got_ to be able to do better than that!"

Enraged, the slightly taller boy threw a barrage of powerful yet unskillful swings at his enemy, while Ness, mocking boredom, stepped backward out of harm's way, than charged forward, fists feinting an attack at Big Bob's head. Falling for it, the bully moved to block the false strike. Then, quick as a snake, the capped boy drew his hands back as he brought his foot up into his opponent's crotch, which, after an unmanly yelp, had the bully falling to the ground.

Then, the audience erupted in laughter. Ness walked over to Lucas, smiling. "It's alright. I took care of things."

Lucas nodded distantly, staring at Robert in disbelief. Still, he followed as his best friend led him away. Then, suddenly, he turned around seeing his valuable encyclopedia of animals lying in the dirt.

Seeing the look of sudden fear come on his rivals face gave renewed strength to Big Bob as he took the paperback book, stood up, and tore the fragile cover and pages in half, the evil grin, once again, returning.

Lucas gasped in absolute horror, and then turned to his friend, who was already stalking up the scene, an unreadable expression on his face. Robert was still sneering, feeling unthreatened, as the brown-eyed boy walked right up, curled his right hand into a fist, and then slammed it into the center of the now-not-grinning face of the bully, who again back-planted into the dirt. Ness then picked up the remains of the encyclopedia with one hand, took Lucas's hand with the other, and walked away, his work here done.

**Alright, I know it's not the most thrilling chapter, but it was still exciting, right? The main plot of the story starts to develop in the next chapter, but this chapter has information that you should remember, so don't forget it.**

**Yeah, and if the stuff with school and the bully and so-forth seemed inaccurate, corny, and stereotyped, well I apologize. But you'd be right about stereotypes because that's what some of it is based on because I've never been to public school, or five-day-a-week school for that matter.**

**If you have any compliments, comments, questions, critiques, or anything at all please tell me in a review (or PM me if you want). If my writing is unclear or hard to understand, please let me know.**

**Sincerely,**

**Nacartor of Cut Productions**


	2. Secrets

**Yeesh, can't a guy get any writing done around here? I mean, seriously, every time I finished my schoolwork and had hours of free time, someone else was using the computers for **_**their **_**schoolwork. Well, I did manage to do this, so, without further ado…**

_To God be the glory._

Onettsons

Chapter 2: Secrets

This was not the first time Lucas had had a confrontation with Big Bob. In fact, it had happened many times before. Big Bob would always come to bully the blonde in whatever way he felt like at the moment, but rarely would his attempt succeed. Frankly put, Lucas was smarter than Robert and he knew it, and so he used it to his advantage. Many times before, the smaller one would fake the bully out, and then make a break for it. And when Lucas made a break for it, there was no stopping him because if Big Bob attempted any pursuit, Lucas would fake him out again and then lose him. Most of the time, however, there was no exciting escape, as Lucas would calculate that he should probably hide if he wished any peace.

So, since he was constantly being outsmarted, Robert took up every chance to hassle the smaller boy. And, of course, that only resulted in more failure. This would make the bully even angrier at his nemesis, and so he would try even harder to beat Lucas at anything he could. This cycle, though he rarely was caught, beat up, or tricked, added tons of angst to Lucas' already complicated life.

Now here he was, sitting by his best friend who had just saved him from a painful fate. Ness's violent actions had Lucas shaken, yet he reluctantly admitted that they somewhat necessary. Overall, he was glad, albeit a bit shamefully, that his friend had stepped in, while being even more glad that Ness's rage hadn't caused him to use his powers. Still, since the two were probably going to spend a few hours together, Lucas determined to talk to his friend about it.

The school bus hit some sort of bump on the road which caused the boy to slide into his friend opposite of him. Due to the unfortunate lack of seatbelts on the bus, Ness's body didn't quite support this new addition of weight. This caused them both to fall out of their seat and to land on the awaiting and not-so-comforting floor below. Therefore, the other children on the bus found it necessary to point out how 'foolish' the accident was. The necessity seemed to decrease when they realized that one of the kids was popular and the look he was giving them noticed.

After this little incident, everything returned to normal for the duo for the rest of the trip to their bus stop. When they arrived, Ness eagerly pushed and shoved for the door while Lucas sat quietly, waiting for the rest of the crowd to pass before exiting himself. When the two regrouped, they wordlessly started to head back for their own neighborhood.

"So, Lucy told me that Dad's going to be busy and she is too, so… do ya think we could head to the field?" Lucas asked.

"Definitely!" Ness replied enthusiastically. "I've been wanting to show you something new!"

"What is it?"

"It's awesome." Lucas could tell by his friend's smile that that was all he was going to reveal about this new trick. So, he donned a smile himself and the two picked up the pace.

They eventually came to the entrance of their neighborhood and walked in, which soon turned into a run as Ness silently declared a race to the field. They ran at an impressive speed, and then went even faster, and faster. And when it seemed impossible that any boys their age and size could run any harder, they looked around, made sure no one else was nearby, and then boosted. Feeling like they were flying, their faces broke into grins as they veered to the right and traded concrete for wide, open, grassy field. Making a satisfying rustle as they were breezed through, the plants posed no opposition to the racers.

Finally slowing down and literally skidding to a halt, Ness and Lucas stopped near a familiar patch of trees and collapsed to the ground.

"I won," Ness stated out-of-breath.

"You did not! It was me," Lucas returned matter-of-factly.

"No, I won."

"No, I won."

"No, **I **won."

"No, **I won**." (And so it went on and on)

Eventually, they stopped their 'I won' contest, as it was obviously going nowhere. "Alright, now," Lucas said, "are you going to show me this new 'thing'?"

"You bet! Just let me get my bearings first," Ness said as he got up and stretched. Then taking a few steps away, he turned around to face his awaiting audience. "Okay, I haven't got this down perfectly, but I've still gotten pretty good at it."

"Go ahead." Lucas smiled.

"Alright! Here goes!" And with that, Ness closed his brown eyes, and jumped into the air. As soon as his feet left the ground, they started switching, and switching and switching and switching. They kept going, and they still didn't touch the ground. The other boy watched, his eyes as wide as his mouth. Ness was hovering above the ground, a trail of golden and silver sparkles following each of his rapidly moving feet.

This seemed to require tons of effort, as Ness's face was already sweating from the strain. The strain apparently grew too great, for the boy unexpectedly stopped levitating and crashed to the ground.

"O my gosh! Are you okay? That was amazing!" Lucas cried as he rushed over to his fallen friend.

"Yeah, I'm alright. That was sweet, wasn't it?" the capped boy replied, sounding completely out-of-breath, though he tried hard not to.

"Sweet doesn't even begin to describe it! How did you learn to do that!" the blonde boy asked ecstatically.

"Well, I didn't really _learn_ to do it. I just…started doing it." That sounded accurate enough. That was really the way they both found out about powers to begin with, and that was also the way they discovered any new abilities.

The two had stumbled across their seemingly random powers when they were much younger, and were shocked when they discovered that they were the only ones they knew who had them. That is, until they met each other. Best friends from the start, they had spent most of their time together. They constantly talked about their powers, but only when they were sure they were alone. It was these that enabled them to run faster, think faster, and basically do everything faster. At first, Lucas was worried that they should tell someone else about them, but Ness's constant reassurance finally got Lucas to agree not to tell anyone.

Whenever they wanted to talk about, practice, or show off any moves, they would always come to the field they were in now, and under this grove of trees.

"I don't know about you, but I'm trying that!" said Lucas enthusiastically. He had seen a lot of weird and fascinating abilities that their powers enabled them to do, but nothing had ever come near to hovering.

"Would ya like some help?" the taller of the two asked.

"Nah, I'm gonna go by myself this time."

"Okay. Just know you can do it."

"Right!" So now Lucas closed his blue eyes, jumped into the air, and began switching. His attempt, however, was met with a prompt plummet to the earth. And so now it was Ness who rushed to his friend's fallen side.

"Are you alright?" he asked, looking the other over.

"Yeah." Lucas sounded disappointed. "Well, I never could do any of these things as well as you could."

Ness smiled and pulled his friend up. He had to admit, it was true. "Maybe with a little practice, that'll change."

"I'm not sure. Maybe we could just-"

"Keep at it," Ness interrupted, "Come on, let's try messing around with it."

"Okay," said Lucas as a smile grew on his face. "As long as we can mess around with…this!" he took a dive at his friend's legs, using some of his power to boost him. The attack worked perfectly, as Ness was sent sprawling on the grass.

Getting up in mock anger, Ness retorted, "THAT was a dirty move."

"It's exactly what you would've done." Lucas shot back with the authority of accuracy on his side. This remark caused Ness to growl with more mock anger, and charge his friend. And so began a friendly fight between the two. The skirmish, at least for them, was fun, and they lost track of time as they powered up their moves with, well, their powers. Both even got chances to pull off the levitation trick, with Lucas starting to get the hang of it.

Eventually, grass-stained and worn out, they simultaneously back-planted into the slightly dry grass, actually enjoying the silence. Their enjoyment was short-lived, though, as the faint whir of a helicopter came within earshot. They opened their once closed eyes to locate the disturbance, and soon saw the black silhouette against the blue sky. In fact, several silhouettes, coming their direction.

"That's weird. There aren't any airports or military bases around here, are there?" Ness inquired.

"Not that I know of," was Lucas's reply. They tried shutting their eyes again, but the noise steadily grew louder and closer.

"Okay, now I'm a little bit uncomfortable," Ness said standing up, "Aren't they a little too close to the ground?"

"Yeah," Lucas said distantly as stood up to join his friend. Now that he could get a better view, he began to look the helicopters over. They were all definitely black in color, and they seemed to have some odd landing gear, that looked a little bit like a claw. That, and the whir had now turned into an unsettling hum.

"Dude, _are _those even helicopters?"

Lucas didn't respond. Suddenly a loud _**BOOM **_was heard, and the copters hurtled toward the ground. Then they stopped, right in front of the two now totally unnerved boys. Hovering in plain sight, Lucas made his reply.

"_Definitely _not helicopters!" he screamed in absolute terror.

**WEEEEEEEEEELLLLL, what do you think? I know this is all moving quickly, and that really isn't my preference. Just, remember everything in this chapter! Do not forget it!**

**Also, are you lost? Totally in the dark about where I'm gonna go with this? If you are, that means I'm doing my job. Please review! And don't expect frequent updates, 'cause I'm really busy. But I do hope you can expect updates this soon from now on (wishful thinking)!**


	3. An Unexpected Turn

**IIIIIIIIIIII'MMM here! Did anybody miss me? I hope you did (you'd better have)!**

**Anywho, I will start out by saying I'm sorry about how fast this part of the story might seem. Believe me, it's not my preference. I don't have the patience to make it longer, so, like…LIVE WITH IT! Or read… in fact, you should. So, without any further ado, I give you…**

_To God be the Glory_

**Onettsons**

Chapter 3: An Unexpected Turn

The hum could be described as unearthly, for indeed it seemed very alien. It could be described as creepy, for the sound made one's flesh crawl. It could also be described as loud, unnerving, and a multitude of other negative adjectives. But none of these things about the hum mattered to Lucas Aldabey, for all he thinking of it was that he could hear it, and that he didn't want to.

Yet the foremost in his mind was this one question: _"What is happening?"_. After all, not moments ago he had been lying peacefully in the grass, and now there was a squad of nightmarish helicopters hovering a mere few feet above the ground a mere few meters in front of him. He wanted to run away, faint, or wake up, but instead all he could do was stand petrified, waiting for the end to come. What annoyed him most was that the end didn't come, as the helicopters (or whatever they were) kept him locked in a disturbing stare-down.

Lucas wondered if Ness was in the same situation, too, but he couldn't force himself to take his eyes off of the black abominations before him. His ears told the boy that his friend was motionless as well, but then something he could not believe.

_Crunch, snap_. Ness was moving toward the helicopters. _Crunch-snap-snap. _Ness was _running_ toward the helicopters. SNAP! A noise that somehow rose above the drone of the helicopters came to Lucas. Z-z-z-z-ZAP! Lucas no longer had to rely on his hearing as his friend came into his line of sight, and now he saw Ness almost flying through the air toward the closest abomination, silver sparks bursting from his outstretched hand. The hand and sparks made contact, and the helicopter reeled back.

Ness landed clumsily and fell to the ground. Looking up, he beheld all four machines hovering ominously around him. Yes, now that he was surrounded, he could clearly tell there were four. Well, that didn't help him. He stood up to face his opposition, refusing to stay down in defeat. Glaring into the visor-windows, Ness wasn't sure who or what was glaring back. He wondered what they would do: start firing some sort of alien ray guns at him, give him an evil monologue, or just keep floating in front of him.

Then, they did the last thing he expected (although that might not be a big surprise to us). The deafening hum grew stronger, and all four machines rapidly ascended. The capped boy gaped as they rose away from him, not comprehending that they were all of a sudden _LEAVING_. He glanced back at Lucas, wondering if he had the same reaction.

Lucas, however, was keeping his eyes on the enemy, which was at that point the smartest thing he could be doing. The machines were slowly rising up, in a circular buzzard-like fashion, drifting farther apart from each other as they went higher. Then…

"Lucas? Buddy? Why do you think they're leaving?" interrupted Ness's words.

"Ness…" Lucas said quietly.

"Huh?"

"Ness!" Lucas shouted, suddenly excited, "LOOK OUT!"

"Wha-?" the other boy whirled around, just in time to behold an orange, nearly silent tractor beam emanating from a claw device on the bottom of one of the black machines. Reacting, not thinking, Ness began to throw all the power he had into going the opposite direction, which was surprisingly easier than he expected. The machine retaliated with an angry sound coming from somewhere in its armor, and then moving forward in order to bring the claw nearer to the frantic children before it.

"YAAAAGHHHHH!" was what both of boys cried in unison. As the pull became too strong, Ness looked to the frozen Lucas for support. His friend only looked back at him with eyes scared to the point of stupidity, and Ness realized he couldn't rely on him. As his feet left the ground, Ness turned around to face his opposition, forcing all the power he could muster into his hands and an intimidating look on his face.

He saw orange. He heard the odd hum of machines. He felt an odd shock go through his body. He heard the clank of metal-against-metal as the claw closed. He slit his eyes. He was trapped.

…

A blurred figure moved stealthily across the… whatever it was. He assumed it was the floor, but given how alien the entire ship was, there was no way to be sure. Several figures had already gone by in the same fashion, as blurry as this one. Of course, the ray shield thingy probably had something to do with it. It was a fiery orange, a stark contrast to the dull gray everything else was.

Determined to make some kind of contact with the outside thing, Ness banged his fist against the orange barrier. This resulted in a painful shock that shot through his arms and upper shoulders. Wringing his hands in an unfamiliar form of agony, Ness slowly put them together and sent a spark of power through them. As he did, the spark wiped out the sting, and his expression relaxed.

This time as he threw his hands against the glowing wall, small sparkles aiding his assault, no pain was inflicted, and the ray even seemed to groan and give way a bit. Encouraged, he enthusiastically attacked the barrier that stood between him and freedom. A steady beat of vibrating groans echoed across the small chamber as his powered-up punches slowly put effect on the shield. On some of his strikes he forgot to use power, so that resulted in pain, but he shook it off each time.

His efforts had definitely attracted attention, for multiple blurry images were gathering up in front of the cylinder-shaped prison. Ness no longer had any interest in them, because all of it was focused on getting _out_.

Then, to Ness's great excitement, the shield began to waver and the figures reacted by scurrying out of sight. They disappeared from view just as the ray died and the boy was released. Stepping out in dramatic triumph, he looked over his surroundings. They included: gray, stone-like walls, strange, buzzing machinery, a few gray…entrances he guessed, and several other prisons identical to his former one.

…Well, now what? He walked up to one of the said entrances, looked it over, and punched it.

"Ow," he uttered as pain (normal pain this time) coursed once again through his arm. Glaring at the door thing, he scanned its edge to look for a place to pry it open. Luckily, he found an opening, and smiling, he went toward it. Then, seeing that it was being opened from the outside Ness crouched and prepared to lunge forward.

It opened a little more, and then commotion was heard on the other side. The entrance started to close, but the boy wasn't about to let that happen. Throwing caution to the wind, Ness boosted toward, though and out the crack.

He paused when he reached the other side, wondering if he should confront his unseen foes. Then he noticed an odd sound, kind of like the sound of…

_**Braack!**_

That was enough convincing for him. Having barely dogged that, he dared not look back as he ran blindly forward until he almost flattened himself into a wall. Franticly searching for a way out, he noticed a handle protruding from the would-be-flattener. Grabbing hold of it, he yanked it back with the help of his power. What he saw then stopped his heart.

Just now he remembered that he was in a helicopter, as he stared down into the brown land far, far, below. He recalled how long he had been imprisoned, which had to have to been many hours. So naturally that raised the question of where he was. But the sound of another blast warming up made his decision for him.

Taking a deep breath, Ness closed his eyes… and fell.

…

Most hearts went _bum-bum_. Normal hearts beat out a calming rhythm. The average heart was difficult to hear.

But the heart he had was different. It still went _bum-bum_. It could still be considered calming in its rhythm. And there was still some challenge in listening to it. Yet the _bum-bum_ was covered by another pulsing sound. There was a flare of fury in the calmness. And it seethed so that in this silence, it was impossible to ignore.

His fingers twitched as a powerful wave of the Other Flame entered them. It made him feel awake, alive. He wanted to use it, to fight. But, no. Today was not that day. That day would come in time, he was certain of it. The evil was out there, risen, searching, and waiting. Waiting to be unleashed.

Just like him.

**SOOOOOOOOOOOO, What did you think? I had fun writing this at after the beginning. And now, two announcements: One, I'm probably gonna have lots of writing time, so maybe you can expect a quick update. Two, I'm gonna start giving short answers to your reviews, so please feel free to ask any questions!**

**CarlineN: You can probably expect most chapters to be around this length, and yeah I'm kinda sorry about that. Also, you got to find out how the cliffhanger ended…with another cliffhanger! Please let me know your opinion.**

**TheMysticalQ: That's a very good guess at the plot… (chuckles deviously) but you have no idea…**

**XD: RUN! RUN! RUUUUN! Well, I hope this chapter delivers like the last one for you.**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing out.**


	4. Alone?

"**Cause every night I just lay awake in my dream, of an absolution! Cause every night I will make it right! And ever-" Oh, heh-heh, sorry, was I just writing that? Please excuse me, but I was just listening to a TOTALLY AWSOME SONIC SONG REMIX (titled 'Dreams of an Absolution' if anyone's interested)! Anyways…**

**Muwahahahaha! Methinks that the ending of the last chapter got some people confused. Don't get annoyed, because that's the purpose! It's there to do just what it did. Confuse you. Once again, I will state that it's my job to confuse. But not always. Just keep that entire part in your mind, and it will **_**eventually **_**make sense.**

_To God Be the Glory._

Onettsons

Chapter 4: …Alone?

Invigorating? Thrilling? Awesome? He supposed. But he couldn't really enjoy these aspects of falling, because his mind was racing around another subject. He tried to come up with some way to stop the force (more widely known as gravity) that was hurling him toward his doom, so that maybe he could survive to figure out just what was going on.

He got an idea just then, a real lifesaver, and quickly began measuring distance, time, and all the other factors of his descent. The brown land rushing to meet him, Ness put his plan into action. Franticly swaying his arms, the now un-capped boy turned and rotated in the air until his body was falling in an angle that was somewhat suitable to his purpose. Now only a few hundred meters from his oncoming death, Ness started to switch his legs violently.

At first, his decent began to slow, and kept doing so until one who didn't know any better would say he was using an invisible parachute. Yet all of a sudden, Ness's body went limp, and fell like a rag doll to the ground. Luckily, he was only a few feet above it when that happened, so the impact hardly caused any damage at all.

He slowly raised his head, blinking. Putting his hand on his head, he realized his prized hat was not on its usual seat of honor. Immediately, he came to his feet. He scanned the surrounding area for the red cap, and let out a cry of jubilance when he at last sighted it. After sprinting over, he set it on his black hair, carefully turning it so that the brim stretched out from his left side.

Just then, his ears caught the familiar sound of an unearthly hum. "_Oh, right,_" he thought, "_There's a giant killer helicopter trying to abduct me_." With these thoughts, he took a quick glance behind his shoulder to check just to make sure the machine was fallowing him, and it was. Now reassured, Ness dashed off in the opposite direction that his foe was approaching from.

Now, as we watch (or read) this story unfold, it is hard to determine whether or not Ness was ecstatic by what happened next, or whether he was simply scared, given his nature. So, let's just say he got excited when he felt the force of small explosions following his feet. His lips first let a gasp pass through them, but they soon turned into a shaky grin as he called on the power manifested in him and sped forward at speeds that would give any jogger fits of jealousy. He was satisfied when he felt the chain of explosions fall a bit behind, but he didn't have much time to maintain his satisfaction any longer.

Now it was time to plan what he would do next. After all, he could not keep running forever. And besides, the shots from his opposition would eventually catch up to him. These were all very crucial questions, and Ness had a very simple answer. He had no idea what to do. The best he could do right now was to swerve one way and the other as he raced away from the death threats he heard coming from behind him.

Then an answer to his silent prayers came in the form of many small plateau-like hills. He ran straight up the first one, and then across to the other side. Fortunately, this maneuver made the shots farther behind then before. Encouraged, Ness promptly preformed it on a few other hills, and then he started to change his routine. Sometimes he would run up the side of one, and then back down it again. Or other times he would fake running toward one then turn the other direction.

He had been keeping this up for a while now, and his forehead was currently holding a 'sweat convention'. But Ness's determination and fear of getting blasted gave him the strength to run longer, farther, and harder. And, unfortunately, it was now that he recalled the problem that comes with multiple enemies: they can surround you. And that was exactly what the abominations were doing now.

One of the black machines was coming straight toward him, a stream of explosions already emanating from two pairs of cannons on its side. This being bad enough, he looked over his left shoulder to behold another one curving toward him, and another heading off into the distance.

Normally he would wonder about one of his foes leaving, but of course, his present situation was not 'normal'. After all, since when was a boy running at scientifically impossible speeds being pursued by UFOs considered normal?

Well, this was it. It was here that it would end. But, of course, that only meant one thing to Ness: now was officially Go-Time. However, whatever exactly 'Go-Time' meant, he wasn't quite certain. So, Ness quickly concluded that he should do what first came to his mind. And that was to swerve to the left and very narrowly dodge the fire coming from the helicopter attacking him from exactly where his planed course was supposed to take him.

Ness somehow had the courage to come so close with, well, death he supposed it was. Now turning to the left, he barreled straight towards the opposition that he would soon attempt to pass. The moment came, and he turned over and slid, scraping past the fiery bolts. Then, his eye caught a mound a few meters away, and redirected his course once again.

Wonders of wonders, there was a highly convenient crevice in it, which he quickly dove into. Yet, the cost of doing that while running at a good 20 mph was a hard collision with an even harder stone wall.

Ness slowly pried himself off of the rock and immediately felt blood flow down his face. He wiped his face off at an equally slow pace. Then the welcome sound of confusion among the abominations as they frantically tried to avoid a fateful crash. Relieved, the capped boy gratefully greeted the drone of the helicopters moving around in more confusion, telling him that they were looking for him, which told him that he was safe from them, for now.

…

"…AAAAAGGGGHHHH!" A jolt of fire shot through him. "Ughhh!" He was pushed brutally forward. "Eh…YAH!" He stepped hurriedly off the boarding bridge of the helicopter, twisted his ankle, and fell on his side. "Oooohhhhh…" He winced as he slowly lifted himself off of the painfully hard ground. Strange, it didn't seem like normal dirt, or even rock. It was tougher, and somehow, sinister.

Lucas closed his eyes, not wanting to look into the evil world the lay beyond his eyelids. However, as he was forced to walk again he was simultaneously forced to open his eyes to avoid another costly fall.

Eventually, he managed to stumble into the gateway of the wall surrounding the gray building. Gray building. That didn't sound right now that he saw it clearly. He couldn't be sure, but there was something about it that screamed, "Evil surrounds me!" It seemed to be some sort of living, breathing monster, its only desire to suck everything into the agony inside of it. Just these thoughts made the victim shudder, but another jolt forced him to continue his seemingly mile-long plod to the entrance to the prison.

Thinking of which, who was driving him toward that horrific door? Lucas dared to turn his head to see, and caught a glimpse of…nothing. Then, another shock came out of nowhere and pushed him into the erection. If it were up to him, he would have passed out right then and there. But his captors weren't permitting that to happen when a powerful hand on his shoulder kept him from collapsing to the ground. It then forced him down a long, dark hallway with a rather mechanical pace.

Lucas's conciseness failed him then, and so did his memory. The next thing he knew, he was alone in a… a cell. A Cell?

"_No. No!"_ his mind screamed to an answer of nothing. "How? Oh, GOD, How? Why?" He caught a gasp on his mouth as he realized he had just said that aloud. He threw his head up and stared out of his barred entryway. There was no one there, so he turned shakily around and noticed several things: one, he was seated on a slab of stone-wait, no, the 'sinister' stone, that was protruding from the back wall of his humble abode. Two, there was a small window on that same back wall, which was bared, similar to his door, and from it came…groaning?

He knew not why, nor would he ever, but he timidly turned even more and peeked out through the bars, and what he saw shocked him. Statues. Just two statues. Granted, they were placed just outside of his viewing point, and their shape was a bit unnerving, but they were still just statues. Nothing more. Not creepy, indescribable monstrosities. Just statues.

He would have melted with relief then, but his eye caught movement. He focused again at the world beyond his window, and what he saw now shocked him even more than before. The statues, with the groaning much louder, were turning their heads, ever so slowly, to gape straight at him. Suddenly, with the laws of reality stretched right before him, Lucas lived his dream, and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

…

_**BRAAAASHHHKKK!**_

"_Wow. What was that?_"

Ness peered out of the crevice, completely oblivious to the fact that he had just exposed himself. Well, he saw the three helicopters, except if they were looking for him, they were doing a pretty pathetic job. All of them were way off course, and furthermore-what was that? He thought he had detected several lances of light heading from the desert floor to the machines, and… yes! He saw it. Shots being fired back. The Abominations were in a showdown with…somebody. But who?

But, he was determined to find out. No awesome, climatic boss fight was going to pass in real life without him seeing it (or joining it) up close! So, off he boosted. He got there in about ten seconds, but that seriously wore him out, not to mention send him flying after he crashed his foot into a small rock. Nonetheless, he got up quickly, only to get his mind blown (but not literally). Numerous boys stood in an unorganized formation, eyes locked lazily on their adversaries. The two sides must have _really _disliked each other, because neither of them noticed Ness.

"PK MORTAR!" one of the boys cried. Out of nowhere, a big, black, vibrating sphere surrounded by orange wisps of fiery light appeared around the boy. Ness watched in awe as the ball of energy rocketed into the air, and crashed into one of the black 'copters. A large explosion burst from where the sphere once was and swallowed up its victim. As a response, the other two backed away a little, and the showered the group with relatively pitiful blasts.

As _their _response, the young fighters erupted into a variety of projectiles and battle cries. Within seconds, a second abomination crashed to the ground and transformed into a bonfire. For the third and last, the boys had something special planned. They yelled amongst themselves, and then one in the middle jumped all the way up to the flying machine.

The unnamed boy landed neatly on the helicopter's visor. This must have panicked the pilot, because the helicopter immediately began to swerve madly. However, this hardly affected the balance of its assailant, who cried something inaudible.

All this had already convinced Ness that if anyone real deserved the title of 'awesome', it was this guy. So naturally, his brain was numbed when 'this guy' suddenly caused the entire aircraft to become clothed in blue lightning and he had to come up with a title higher than awesome for him.

Now **all **the boys jumped onto the doomed machine, and now more multi-colored fits of sparks came from all over their target. Suddenly, a great shudder went through the ship, and a dozen giant, orange flares shot out of somewhere on the top of the helicopter, going straight up until they were out of sight.

Now the helicopter let out a deafening groan, and plummeted to the earth. Daredevil fashion, the boys didn't get off until the last second. When the menace landed, it didn't explode, but lay motionless, signifying the retirement of its duties.

Ness was about to involuntarily let out a shout, but thought better of it at the last moment. He didn't know anything about these people, and that would let them know he was here before he wanted them to. Carefully, he started slowly towards the victors, making sure he wasn't visible.

He had been approaching for no more than ten seconds when he heard: "Alright, dude, please come out and don't embarrass yourself by thinking anyone wouldn't notice _that_."

Implosively, Ness raised himself up to full height. Apparently, his appearance was a bit unattractive, for one of the boys began to laugh hysterically. "What is this?" He asked, "the freak show!"

"Your one to talk," Ness countered to a guy who had just brought down a killer UFO. "Do ya ever get comments on those pants?"

Laughter ensued from the rest of the crowd, for the torn, ugly trousers were the exact opposite of pretty. The first laugher (who wasn't laughing anymore) glared daggers at everyone, especially Ness.

"Well played, well played," said one of the group, walking calmly up to the outsider. "That deserves him a welcome," he said more to his companions than to Ness.

"A welcome? To where?" Ness asked with slight suspicion.

The other boy chuckled. "Fellow Onettson, welcome to Onett."

"**I see it! I see it! And now it's all within my reach! Endless possibility! I see it! I see it, now! It's always been inside of meeee! And now I feel so freeee…" Oh, heh-heh-heh, was I just typing the lyrics of ANOTHER TOTALLY AWSOME SONIC SONG (not a remix this time! Titled 'Endless Possibility' if anyone's interested…again)!**

**Wow, only two reviews? You guys (or gals) are getting lazy! (And only on the third chapter, hmmm…)**

**XD: I'm glad you got that Ness was captured, and pleased you are utterly confused about the last part *chuckles*. No, it was not explained this chapter, nor will it be the next. You'll just have to wait and see.**

**TheMysticalQ: Well, it wasn't Lucas's POV at the end last time, but good guess. Ya know, originally, this entire chapter was supposed to be only about Ness, but your wish to see poor old Lucas again inspired me to put that little part in at the middle.**

**CarlineN: Hope to read you next time!**

**P.S.: When Lucas said 'GOD', he WAS referring to Jesus. I'd advise you not to flame against it unless you're looking for a verbal showdown.**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	5. Welcome to Onett

**MURPHY! Why must the computer fail! Yes, I know this took a while, but I have reasons, AWIRT (AnyoneWhoIsReadingThis)!**

**I was working on a Sonic the Hedgehog one-shot, but I lost inspiration or something or other. So, after going a ways in that, I decided to just get back to writing this until summer break gets here. Oh, and that reminds me, good news! My school gets out about a month or so before public does, so I'll be able to write more sooner! Hooray! And back to why this is late. My computer's screen decided to stop working for me, and so of course that didn't help.**

**Now, on with the story. I proudly present…**

_To God Be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 5: Welcome to Onett

He was cold. Deathly cold. Why? Because somewhere in him there was a painful spark of warmth. Yet it was small. So very small. Therefore, in contrast, the rest of his body felt like it was trapped in the deepest depth of an iceberg.

Lucas knew that he really wasn't this cold. "_It's all in your head,_" he kept telling himself. "_You're warm! Warm!_"

But he wasn't. He just couldn't come to convince himself of that. Not for the last time, or the first, Lucas sank even lower on his knees and let out a wave of sobs that crashed into his confidence and sank it.

A monotone stomping filled his ears and caused him to look up. Gasping, he beheld the gaping face belonging to one of the living statues. Its eyes, though hidden by the carved hair, were obviously searching him, taking in every detail of his pitiful form. Then, horrors of horrors, it seized the gate of his cell and thrust it open. Not even missing one beat, it took up its mechanical plod once again and marched right up to Lucas's quaking self. Taking hold of the helpless one's shoulder, it forced him to walk at its own jerky pace and seemingly thrust him out of his 'room' and down the hallway.

Lucas fidgeted, but then a gleeful yet disturbing thought crept into his head: "_Is it-is it…taking me to where Mom is…?_"

…

"Onett… what's that?"

Ness did not get an answer, for now all of the boys were jogging away, as if he was not confused at all. "Wha-where are you going?" he demanded.

One of the boys in the middle of the group turned around. "Well, are ya coming or do ya want to stay here and die in the desert?" he shouted back, and then continued running to whatever random thing that was attracting him and his companions.

"I-That didn't even answer my question!" Ness cried before bolting after them.

When he caught up in about two seconds, he cast quick glares around the group. "ALLRIGHT," He said loudly to gather their attention. Instead, however, he only got a few annoyed glances. Ness chose to ignore them, and continued speaking. "Where are we going and what is 'Onett'?"

His now audience glanced amongst themselves in an exasperated fashion until all eyes (including those of Ness) landed on the welcoming one.

"Why me?" he asked with a frown.

"You welcome him," said the boy with the soon-to-be-infamous pants, "you handle him."

"Not that what you just said makes any sense, but alright."

Yet again, the pants boy glared around as everyone laughed a bit, then continued running in the same direction. Calling him over with an impatient wave of his hand, Ness's new 'handler' sized him up. In truth, the cap wearer was taller than him, but he still knew who was most capable.

"Come on," He said briefly before turning after the others, already racing away from them.

"Hold on a sec," Ness called, "Who are you people, anyways?"

"Keep up with me and I'll tell you!" was the answer. Frowning, Ness quickly obliged.

When he caught up with him ten seconds later, his handler began speaking without taking the slightest glance at him. "Onett is our home. It's where we walk, talk, eat, and sleep; all that good stuff. It's also where we train and fight."

Ness's mind caught hold of the last sentence, thinking, "_This is interesting…_"

"I assume you saw us rip those helicopters," the boy beside him continued after a pause. "That's what I mean by 'fight'. That's how Onettsons fight. See,-"

"Wait, wait, wait," the 'student' interrupted. "If Onett is your home, then what is an 'Onettson'?" Instead of a reply, Ness only got a glance that looked as if he had just asked the dumbest question ever. Which, maybe he had.

"DUH." One thing Ness could tell: this other guy really had his 'sarcastic face' down. "An Onettson is someone who lives in Onett." Suddenly as they were still running, the 'handler gazed skyward, a confused look on his face. "Well, that's _technically _what an Onettson is," He said after three seconds. "But really it's some random person like you."

"Like ME!"

"Yes. Like you."

"Huh."

"Ya see, Onettsons are people who have the powers and all the other perks that both you and I have." Here Ness ceased giving any thought towards navigating the terrain, and subsequently stumbled and nearly pulled of a perfect face-plant. His companion gave no notice and continued talking and running. "'Onettson' is the term we give to anyone who has PK powers, and the super long life, and all the so-fourth." Now the speaker skidded his speech as well as his stride to a halt which caused a certain confused red capped boy to face-plant. The real thing this time.

"There's the Mountain. We're here. We've arrived."

…

What was this? This giant stone log on a train track with veins filled with orange energy and grey sludge running up it; what was it? Using basic deductive reasoning, Lucas surmised that it was nothing pleasant. Well, at least it did get the statue guards to keep a few paces back…on second thought, that may have not been a good thing after all.

"Come on! Ease up on me pal!" Who (or what) was that? "AAAAUUUGGHH!" There! That was someone else! Someone else emitting that sound that seemed the only thing he himself could get out of his own mouth. Did this perhaps mean that he was not alone?

Indeed it did, for then two other boys, as visibly fearful and downtrodden as he, were forced into the room. As if in sync, the two newcomers raised their heads simultaneously and locked eyes with him, and then each other. As this happened, an unspoken understanding passed between them: they were all together in the same predicament. And this meant that, in some form and in some way, a team.

This same understanding passed through many other boys' minds in the next few minutes. By the time the next 240 seconds were up, there was a troop of twenty terrified youths, lined up on both sides of the mysterious log-thing with hands firmly latched to the limb-like handles which had recently 'grown' out for their convenience. "_Or, maybe the opposite_," Lucas thought grimly yet logically.

The sound of a small stomp bounced around the dark hall and found his ear, and then the blonde found the purpose of the orange-illuminated wires. A shock of purely dreadful pain ricocheted through his body like echoes in a deep, damp cave. Its path of travel ended in his leg, which thrust it, along with the rest of him, forward. He met surprisingly with no resistance, and only when he looked up did he find out why. The rest of the boys were lurched forward over the handholds like him and Lucas realized that they all had stepped forward at the same time as him, no doubt for the same cause.

Then the pain came again, and once again the children pushed the log forward. And then it came again, and then again, and again, and again, and again, and again…

…

Ness picked himself off of the sand. "We've arrived where?" he asked a trifle maliciously. His nonchalant companion looked to him and answered with one word.

"Onett."

The capped one squinted up at the massive plateau before him. "_I must have really been distracted_," he mused, "_to have missed THAT_." Then a thought struck him. "Wait, you were saying that I was an Onettson, right?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And you were saying that Onettsons have 'super long life'?"

"Yes."

"So that means that-"

"Yes, you have super long life. I'll explain further if we catch up with the others." Even as he was saying this, the boy shot himself up the sheer cliff face. The 'others' indeed were far ahead of the two, already half way up the giant geographical hunk of rock looming over them. Once again, the apparent Onettson followed as fast as he could, all the while being grateful for his newfound skill with the hovering technique. Otherwise, he reasoned, he would be dead for sure by now.

After an hour of climbing (jumping, grabbing, and scrambling), Ness finally reached the top and caught up with the rest of the group-well, those that had waited and not moved on. This included his elected mentor, who wasted no time in explaining the questions that were pasted over Ness's face. He then noticed that they were all at a large hole in the mountain's top, similar to that of a volcano, except there was no smoke and ashes coming out. It almost seemed safe.

"I'll start by explaining all the special traits of an Onettson," he said as he walked down the steep rock decline. "First and Foremost, all of us have PK powers, the ones I mentioned earlier. You'll be seeing plenty of demonstration of those soon enough. Now, secondly, Onettsons live longer the average windbag,-"

"Wait, how long exactly?"

Sighing at his student's obnoxious habit of questions, the exasperated boy continued a little more forcefully, as not to be interrupted-

"So, how old are you?"

Holding back the almost overwhelming urge to scream out indecipherable nonsense, the teacher turned around to make sure that he could finish the lesson once and for all. "ALRIGHT! I'M 176 YEARS OLD! FOR REAL!" He was panting as he ended his outburst, and a bit red-faced, too.

"Your-huh?"

"176. Wrap your brain around it! Remember the part about long life? I have it. You see the guys beside me? They have it. The guys going down the Mountain? They have it. And lastly, you have it yourself!" Before Ness could respond or make any needless comments, the infuriated one went on. "We also have PK powers, which I mentioned before, but you'll be shown that later." The capped and confused one tried to cut in, but he was cut off. "ALSO, Onettsons can only be boys. There never have been, or ever will be, any exceptions. No… (What was it again?) girls.

"Thank goodness for that." Another muttered as he descended down into the gapping nothingness below. Ness looked after the climber, wondering where he was going.

"Onett." His eyes must have been read, for his teacher had just answered his unspoken question. Now another one formed in his mind.

"What's your name?" He added, "I can't keep callin' ya 'you', can I?"

"I suppose not. My name's Aaron. And your name would be-?"

"Ness."

"Ness. That's a weird one."

"Hey," Ness said under his breath. He brought his eyes back up when Aaron returned to speaking.

"Let's get going. We're not losing the rest of the group **again**."

There were many rock outcrops jutting out of the sloping side of the hole, making a convenient walkway downwards. Exactly why someone would want to go downwards, that was beyond Ness. But he went anyways, his mind occupied with the endless possibilities that could be awaiting him down this oversized crevice.

Now HIS thoughts were the ones being interrupted. It was Aaron. "You remember what I told you about Onettsons, right?"

"Yep. Long life, even to 176 years, PK powers, which I will see later, and only boys, no exceptions."

"Good," the apparent Onettson responded. "One more thing, though. Watch your step." And with those meaningful little words, he promptly dived off of the outcrop he was on and disappeared from Ness's sight.

"What?" he gapped at where his guide had just been seconds before. "Is this guy crazy!" he said aloud without knowing it.

However, an unexpected reply came. "YES!" Now Ness knew exactly what that meant, and what it meant he should do.

"Well, you don't need to ask me twice!" He cried before throwing himself off the edge. You see, he had become uncomfortably comfortable with jumping off ledges since he had learned to break his fall with the levitation trick. So now he found that it was only logical to send himself hurtling toward the ground from an unknown height.

As his decent began, Ness saw nothing but simple, hazy, dry land rushing to embrace him, not even Aaron. But as he came closer, the view before him blurred and eventually, disappeared. Now confronted with a metropolis rushing to embrace him instead, his first reaction was to freak out. Which he did, momentarily. Then he got a grip, convincing himself that he could survive the fall. "_Well, it's the impact I'm worried about, right? Indeed, so let's live through it._"

Moral now strengthened, they boy began to react on instinct. Leaning his head forward, his body followed (in keeping with the old saying) and he avoided a crash with a rather tall building (in comparison with the others). A road was attempting to hug him now, so it was time to stop skydiving and deploy his 'parachute'.

Just like the first time, he straightened out in the air, feet facing the ground. Switching time! His feet began to alternate positions in front of him and in back of him. As he expected and hoped, the life-saving sparkles appeared and slowed his life-taking fall, and he landed without fatalities seconds later.

This time straightening out on solid ground, he got a better look at his surroundings. They were colorful, yet somewhat distorted buildings, a grey/brown road, a handful of staring young males, and Aaron dropping smoothly from the structure he had almost hit. "Not bad, for an amateur." was his slightly impressed remark.

At the sight of him, though Ness didn't quite notice, the onlookers took a step back. "Hey guys!" Aaron shouted, "The newcomer's over here!" Moments later, the rest of the team that had destroyed the helicopters came with many a flashy entrance. At the sight of them, the audience dispersed.

After reclaiming his hat, the once-again confused boy walked up to the group in front of him. "Explain." was the only word he said, but it was enough.

Annoyance flashed in his teacher's eyes, but Aaron did as he was asked. "You're in Onett, and everyone you see here will be an Onettson. Now let's get to the basics of living in our town. First, your powers will be tested at the arena. See the dome over there? That's the arena." Ness looked to the direction that was indicated, and sure enough a large dome loomed over the smaller structures before it. "After they are assessed, you'll be chosen by one of the Fourteen Teams of Onett."

"_Fourteen Teams?_" the student asked in his head.

"After that, you're gonna have ta find a place to live. AND you'll have to participate in your teams fights at the arena; and if ya win, then good for you."

"_Arena? Teams? Fights? I must be dreaming._"

"Come on, let's go see how much of a weakling you are." It was somebody in Aaron's team, or so he guessed. They were all racing away to the arena, or so he guessed again.

"_Geez, someone woke up on the wrong side of the world,_" Ness commented before starting after them. A million things were swarming in his mind, but he pushed them back trying to focus on the present moment. "_I guess my dream must be coming a reality,_" he said in his head as an afterthought.

How could he have known, how could he have guessed, as he ran off after a group of boys he had just met, how could he have known the world that he had just stepped into?

**Whew! I. Am. Done. And I'm proud, too. Well, I hope this chapter wasn't too fast, confusing, etc. for you all. I'm just so happy it's finally up. At the beginning I was writing kind of half-heartedly, so I apologize if that messed this chapter up.**

**Well, in case you don't already know, there is a Cut Productions website that YOU SHOULD VISIT! I can't tell ya'll why, 'cause I don't have the time. There's not much on it now, but when summer break gets here we'll start updating it. Oh, also: if you a reader of Onettsons, then you MUST alert to me because (a. it makes my day; and (b. I normally update at times you probably wouldn't expect, so that'll keep you on the top of… something.**

**Website .com**

**CarlineN: WHAT! The last chapter clarified everything! NOOOOO! That means I'm not doing my job! Glad you enjoyed it and I hope you enjoyed this one! **

**SuckOutYourSoul: umm, so, what's your real user-name? This one's kinda… cryptic. Anyways, I will keep at it, thank you very much! Yes, I'm glad that his reactions were legit, because I worry about making them too stereotypical. Oh, and you are spot-on about Lucas being mentally scarred.**

**TheMysticalQ: I will check out your story if you'd like, but you must tell me what franchise it's for. Well, you got to find out a lot more about Onett this chapter, hope it made sense. I'm glad you have sympathy for Lucas.**

**Sky Chain Lilyana: BEING CHRISTIAN ROCKS! YEAH! AND PWONAGE DOES, TOO! YEAH!**

**PenFullofChaos819: Nooooo, powers! Don't drain like that! Glad to have you on board, and I must say you're good at reviewing. Yeah, Ness isn't the smoothest character right now. And you are right! Lucas, be polite!**

**And now for your compadres:**

**Metal: Awww… did big bad robot faker get the sniffoos? Silver, be a dear and hand him a handkerchief, would you please? Well, Metal, if you approve of Ness then you'll like the next few chapters, trust me!**

**Silver: So did you hand him the hankey? And KEEP SYMPATHIZING! Have a heart! And I sympathize on how you got picked on! BTW, how were you treated AFTER your world got all messed up?**

**Zewrovie: Don't think I forgot about you, man! Thanks for the logos, website, support and everything! And maybe this account thing will work out. Maracta and I may drop out of contact until our summer break. I'll try to get to reading your story soon!**

**Keep Reading, AWIRT!**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off!**


	6. Uncovered Power

**School's out (at least for me)! My last homework assignment was issued on May 10, 2012. My new schedule is to write every day, with one exception a week. Now let's hope I can keep up! This might mean longer chapters, and definitely quicker updates! Summers are always busy, of course, so there will be some vacation etc. interruptions. **

**And so the plot thickens! I am glad to officially announce that we have entered phase two of the Onettsons story! Well, actually last chapter was the beginning of phase two, but hey, we're in it nonetheless. I intend to do a lot more skipping around from POV to POV when I can, just so you know. I'll let you guys know some more stuff in the finishing notes. So, without further ado…**

_To God be the Glory_

**Onettsons**

**Chapter 6: Uncovered Power**

The warmth inside him was not the heat that bended at the say-so of his will. It was the confidence in who he was, and what he could accomplish. The warmth was there because of what he had accomplished, because of what he had already become. And he knew that staying where he was was not an option, and moving up was the only way to go. So up he went. To reform this dirty, uncivilized world that he lived in.

It was not hard, his dramatic shift of position, of power. His will stretched out over more than just flames, but also over those that admired him. These people, they were his fans really. Doing what he asked of them with almost mindless behavior, it was a bit unsettling. But how could he mind? If it were not for them, he would never have the ability to do this act, this takeover of nothing. Indeed, there was nothing to takeover, nothing in the way.

Until he showed up. Out of nowhere he came, eyes slit judgingly while standing in his way. The green fire pulsed through his veins, contradicting the orange that flowed through his own. Nothing was said, as everyone of consequence watched, itching and wondering at what would come next.

What happened next was a duel, brought on by the challenge issued by the Singe Master. And so the two flames had their little, meaningless argument. It wasn't really a match at all, for although the challenger was powerful, he could not compare with the _heat _that was his opposition. He was sorry, the celebrity noticed, of what he had done. "_A duel to the Death_" was what the challenger wanted, and so he was going to get it.

At least, that was popular opinion.

…

"I'm in the cell right besides yours." These were the words whispered to Lucas as he passed another prisoner on their way to another work project. Such was what the blonde had been hearing lately, small notifications from the other captives showing just how starved and desperate they were for brotherhood. For companionship.

But the remarks worked. Lucas for sure wasn't going to be visiting the person in the cell next to his, but just the knowledge of someone there could mean something to talk to, something to confide in, even if it really wasn't there.

But relatively, this was foolishness. How could such small pleasures prevail against the agonizing disease of the prison, the guards, the work, the horror? These statues, they took them out of their cells, and in those instants every boy wondered how they could miss a barred room so dearly. Forced into painful labor, whatever they did they did it all day, the mindset of hopelessness forming upon them. Whether they were tugging, shoving, pushing, or pulling at the subject of their work, an endless line of guards stood on either sides of the claustrophobic hallway like the sculptures they imitated.

Stranger yet were the disappearances. Some days a kid would go missing, never to be seen again. No one knew why, well, that was at least was what everyone thought. But as time passed, an unknown friend would leave, and then much later another would. Just as the cycle of birth and death, though, every time there was a disappearance, a few new unfortunate souls would enter their miserable world.

"Why? What did I do-?" Lucas was sure that he asked that every time he found himself in his room alone. Why? What had he done to deserve this? Like a rerun on TV, the question began to drive him insane along with all the other oppressive forces in the prison.

"_Ness…Where are you?_"

…

The Arena. That's where Ness was (although Lucas didn't know that). The building was huge. Multitudes of odd though functional chairs surrounded a lowered oval-shaped part of the ground in the center, obviously serving as the fighting ring. It was blocked off by a net made up of what appeared to be chains. The floor slowly sloped downwards, and the entire picture reminded the capped boy of a professional basketball arena.

Soon the procession arrived and stopped at the wall of chains stretching far above them. Aaron stepped forward, hand in front of him as he stood a few feet from the barrier. "PK Fire!" he yelled, and to Ness's somewhat surprise, a shaft of fire flew from his hand and burst into a pillar. When he looked back to the chains, an opening in the otherwise impenetrable wall met his eyes.

"So, this is where the fun begins?" he asked, assuming that this was the sight for 'power assessment'.

"Indeed it is. Now step inside and let's do this." The capped boy entered and walked to the middle of the arena. Suddenly, his ears picked up some interesting comments from Aaron to his group.

"-_this to me. I don't need you spoiling my fun._" Interesting. So apparently, power evaluation was more 'fun' then it sounded. Speaking of sounds, did he not just hear Aaron cracking his knuckles?

"_Thanks powers for the super-hearing,_" he said gratefully to himself before turning to face his teacher. Ness suspiciously looked over the Onettson before him, hand twitching at his side. "_If this guy intends to beat up on me, he'll be in for a surprise._"

"Alright," the other said with a smile that couldn't be trusted. "Ya ready to learn some tricks?"

"Ready. Just don't go and do anything-"

"PK Landslide!" Next thing Ness knew, the ground by Aaron jutted up and charged towards him like a wave. His attempted dodge proved to no avail, and it slammed into him with painful force. When he got his eyes to look up instead of at the dirt, they were glaring with an unholy light.

"_I guess that was the 'powers' I was told about. This should be good…_"

"Come on, dude. I announced that as loud as I could, made the attack go slowly, and you still couldn't dodge it?" An enraged glance, along with a lot of other enraged signals, told him that the newcomer was ready to give him payback. Aaron smiled. This meant that the guy had spirit.

"Fine then. DODGE THIS!" After another cry of 'PK Landslide', a second rock wave was sent hurtling for the capped boy. Giving a slight growl, he leaped over the incoming obstacle. His foot caught on to the very top of the wave, which resulted in the Ness's second face plant that day. He did get some reward, however. With a surprised and impressed expression on Aaron's face, Ness knew he was doing above average already. Though that didn't change the fact that he was still angry at the 'Landslider'.

"Well done. Well done," said the slightly impressed voice. "Yet, dodging is done better if you go to the side of the attack, not over it. …PK Landslide!"

"_Again? Really?_" the capper questioned. "_Might as well dodge._" Now his first instinct was to dodge back, but he was most definitely certain that wouldn't work. The next was to go over again, but he had already seen where that would leave him. Then he recalled that it was "better if [he] goes to the side of the attack". Amazing how quick someone can forget something.

After executing the maneuver, Ness found that it was much easier, though not exactly easy. "What's next?" he asked, feeling he was getting the hang of it after only three tries.

"I'm glad you asked," was the teacher's response. "Hit me with all you have. That's right, attack me." Now this got the tall one thinking. He didn't know how to do what Aaron had just done, three times in a row. After all, all he had done was say-

"PK Landslide!" Ness tried. Nothing happened. Aaron chuckled. "PK Landslide!" This time he tried throwing body force into it. He thought he heard a small rumble from the ground in front of him, but he couldn't tell if it was his imagination. He tried again, and this time absolutely zero took place. Well, that is except for his opponent producing a grin at his failures.

What was he doing wrong! What was he missing? He was saying the words, and putting all his effort into it! So what had Aaron done besides that and…strike his foot and hand out together.

"_Oh, so that's what I'm doing wrong_," he whispered quietly to himself. Now sure of what he had to do, he determined to lay the arrogant obstacle on his feet. "PK-!" He pulled in his left arm and leg. "-Landslide!" Hand, arm, leg, and foot now released, and he saw the sandy floor erupt into shards of rock that zoomed toward an astonished and not-so-smug looking Aaron, who dodged just before impact.

After eying him with a bit of reverence, the Onettson looked back as the rock wave collided with the wall behind him and shattered. "Okay," he announced turning around, "you're more powerful than I thought. Perhaps we could try something with a little more bite. What do ya say?"

"Go for it."

"Okay then. Next up is a basic but essential move, known a 'PK Fire'," Aaron revealed, taking a few steps closer. Ness cautiously took a few steps back.

"Simple enough, really. Just thrust your hands out like this," he paused his explanation here to hold his dirty hands out, one palm above the other. "Then bring them back, and then back out as you cry…PK Fire!" A red and yellow colored flash in between his wrists let loose a small, spikey, cylinder-shaped shaft of flames that flew along and passed by Ness barely. It slanted downward, and flared up into a plume upon impact, disappearing as suddenly as it had appeared. All happened in slightly more than a blink of the eye. "Try it."

Stepping back as he prepared himself to follow that order, Ness tried it. The same motions, the same speed, the same words, but not the same outcome. Instead of a fiery projectile zooming out from absolutely nowhere, all he got was the flash. "_Great. What in the world am I doing wrong now?_"

"More effort. There's more than moving your body wildly to do these. To accomplish it, don't focus on the stuff everyone else is going to be seeing, just focus on the goal of doing the attack." Aaron said quietly.

"_Okay, so my goal is to pull this off, so I'm supposed to, like, focus on doing that. I think,_" Ness thought. "PK-" He was cut off.

"I'll be back later. If you actually do manage to successfully pull off a 'PK Fire by the time I get back, I'll be impressed. Until then, good luck practicing." The teacher left with those highly encouraging words, to which he heard the second attempt at the advanced technique from his pupil. Then, he heard the sound of a minor explosion, smelled smoke, and felt intense heat emanating directly behind him.

The confused Onettson turned slowly around, very slowly, to behold a six-foot tall fire right in front of him, burning with a fury and power that exceeded that of his own. The next sight he beheld was Ness smiling confidently as he neared him. "What's next, big shot?"

"I-uh, I-Leave me alone for a second!" The capped boy complied, backing away with a cocky grin.

There was a long moment of exciting silence as Aaron visibly fidgeted over what was in his head. Apparently, he came to the conclusion of expanding the second of being left alone to a much longer time frame. This was evidenced by him shouting these exact words: "Hey, Matt! Take the newcomer here and show him where he's gonna be staying!" (A few of Aaron's group had been hanging around while the power evaluation was going on, but they had been lost in conversation so all events in the fighting pit had gone unnoticed by them.) Obviously puzzled by his teammate's manor, 'Matt' quickly entered the ring after PK Firing the wall of chain-things, and firmly led Ness, confused once again, out of the arena.

"_And just as I was figuring this thing out._"

…

Later, that day (more specifically, in the evening), Matt returned with a few other of his colleagues to see what all the fuss was about with Aaron. The night's series of matches were over, and the Arena was vacant, except for them. Aaron was found in the abandoned first row of seats; hand on his chin as he gave the appearance of being thoughtful.

"Alright then, idiot. Stop crying and tell us why you've been so mopey," one of the Dominter demanded from the brooding boy before them. Aaron looked up, and resumed the role of the person his audience knew better.

"The newcomer, Ness," he began, "is a lot more than we thought. _Since_none of you that were there when it happened paid attention, I'll explain the situation." The others leaned their heads in closer. "Well, I started by showing him how to dodge by sending PK Landslides at him, which he caught on to quite quickly. Next, I told him to try it himself. After three failed attempts, the cap guy sent one out that came this close to laying me on the dirt," the speaker demonstrated by holding two fingers an inch apart. "Then, I decided to see just how skilled he was, so I showed him PK Fire. He failed once, but after I gave him some advice and started to leave, he sent one that landed **Right behind my heels**. When I turned around, the biggest and hottest PK Fire I have ever seen was, get this, burning on the ground in front of me. It didn't go out for another ten seconds."

All the Onettsons stared at him in awed silence. PK Fire was difficult to pull off, and most fighters didn't master the move till they were over one hundred years old, and yet this newcomer was hardly into double-digits. Not only that, but all PK Fires simply expanded to flames and vanished in less than a second. "Surely you've gotta be joking," two of the Dominter said in unison.

"No," said Aaron sternly, "in fact I'm probably understating. We've got more than just the occasional power-prodigy on our hands, we've got the most powerfully capable Onettson ever heard of, as far as I can tell."

The teacher turned on his heel and marched toward the exit. "And that means we have to get him in our group." His teammates followed. "We've have to get him in Team Dominter."

**Well, done at last! Sorry to keep you waiting for this, since for the most part I've been doing a lot of nothing, lately. Oh, right, and joining me today for the ending notes is my dear sister, Maracta!**

**Maracta: Nacartor, you've got to keep writing faster! **_**I**_** can't wait this long!**

**Nacartor: That added with the fact that I've already told you the plot about three times makes me exceedingly proud! (And I'm awesome!)**

**Maracta: Waaaay to pat yourself on the back, Nacartor.**

**Nacartor: Thank you.**

**Alright, there seem to be two (2) things that are drawing some, shall we say, constant negative-like reminders to the author and/or character. Number 1: Ness's forgetfulness about Lucas. I've taken all of the remarks on this into account and am working on a 'solution', shall we say.**

**Number 2: the lack of girls. This has not come from any personal discrimination, and there are reasons for this, such as girls in Onett would tangle with the plot. If some of you are skeptical about the opinion on girls among Onettsons, let me tell you that most of the boys there think about girls the same way that a lot of boys did when they were four years old.**

**And now for some replies!**

**Innocence: Nice name. Anyways, Surprise! You got to see what happened at the arena, AND you got to see more at a time!**

**TheMysticalQ: WHAT! WHAT KIND OF SLAVE! You mean the kind that he IS! Oh, yeah, I guess that…would make sense… Anywho, Ness doesn't realize he forgot about his friend, and his is acting a bit bad. Hope you liked this chapter!**

**CarlineN: WHATTT! CHAPTER 4 CLARIFIED EVERYTHING? NOOOOOO! *Sobs over dramatically* Well, at least that means your insightful! I'm glad you like my idea, and their objective should become clear soon. Well, Lucas isn't really a slave, more like a 'captive forced into labor'.**

**Maracta: Nacartor, that IS a slave.**

**Nacartor: It is? Oh, I guess it is… And yes, the separation of paths will become crucial.**

**PenfullofChaos(819): My sister and I really don't care how long it takes you to review. We just appreciate it if you read the chapter, and (as all authors) prefer a review whenever you can spare one.**

**Yes indeed, there is no way Lucas is getting to his mom, and it's good that you feel for him. Ditto. And yes, Ness (rhyme!) is going to get quite intriguing quite quickly (alliteration!), as will his companions. I'm also glad you like the apparently infamous pants comment. And 'Onettsons' was originally going to be spelled 'Onettsinnes', but thanks to some input from my father it was changed to the current form.**

**And now for you foolish duo:**

**Metal: Just wait for 'Red Cap', Metal. Just wait… But of course you're absolutely right. Robots do not cry. It is impossible. FICTIONAL robots, such as yourself, however, can bawl just as loud and proud as you did a few chapters ago.**

**Silver: Yeah, I could see how you would've cracked without Blaze being there… Wait a second! If Iblis only took place in Sonic '06, which was erased from the space-time continuum, then how could you possibly remember all this! Hmm… Also, good for handing Ol' Cranky Copper the hanky! That took guts.**

**Undearly Departed: Wow, a bit of a cryptic username, but what is your real one? I'll do my best to put more of Lucas in, though that may be tough. By the way, what system(s) is Mother 3 on?**

**Maracta: And you were too lazy to log in! I mean, come on! It only takes, like, ten seconds. Does that mean you play to many video games? Because that can really-**

**Nacartor: Maracta! *places one finger to lips* shhhh…**

**Oceanlover4ever: Yes, it is moving too fast, but I really didn't have enough time or want to make it otherwise. Sorry about that, but I'm glad you dub this an interesting read.**

**Rosea: Ahh, I see you are a fellow Sonic and Mario fan (only played Galaxy 2 but it was awesome). And it's good to see that you care about Ness not noticing Lucas, and I will try to address that in future chapters.**

**Wow, I got quite a few new reviewers on last chapter, hope this one does the same!**

**Also, to clarify, the time we've seen with Lucas has been over the time span of about a few weeks, though I am responsible some unrealistic timing on his part. And with Ness it's only been a few hours.**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	7. The Games

**What's up, AWIRT? Well, the correct answer to that would either be the sky, the ceiling, or that random flying squirrel, but I digress. It's time we got to more important matters, like how I recently slipped and fell into a waterfall, and how my sister caught some sort of stomach sickness all in the same day. But we're both alive, thanks be to God. To read about another time I almost met death, click here: Now that that's done, I got to get on with this story.**

**I took a vacation to the Colorado Rockies, and then a short mission trip before writing this, so that would explain some of the delay. I am late with this, aren't I?**

**So without further ado…**

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 7: The Games

He was sorry, the celebrity noticed, of what he had done. '_A duel to the Death_' was what the challenger wanted, so he was going to get it.

At least, that was popular opinion.

So came the time for the master of the red flame to master that of the green flame. He did not even have to say the title of the move to preform it; since it used the element he was almost akin with. He did say it though; just to give some extra spice to his finisher, and if not for his pleasure then his followers'.

'_PK Fire_' the soon-to-be-sovereign fighter shouted with a dominance that would turn away most opposition unaided by further assault. Away went the arching, dancing, roaring inferno, away it went to rid the Boy's Town of this person. This person who stood against change. This person who stood against order. This Singe Master who stood against him.

But his concentration was not all on his final shot, and where the rest of it was the fire master would never know. For although the flame was quite impressive, something about it, be it aim or execution, was off, and it curved up towards the sky at the last moment. Therefore, a single tongue of the flame bit at the ignorant challenger, which was blocked with relative ease.

However, the hand of the enemy was shaking, along with the rest of a quivering body. Yes, quivering in fear, he was sure. And now was his true chance of victory. So as to ensure that he did not miss again, he ran with a cry toward the shivering form before him, preparing to unleash the deathblow to him.

Then, it happened. It all came tumbling down.

The shaking hand moved with unseeable speed, caught the fire warrior's neck, and the other hand, which had been secretly charging a Singe Poke, slammed itself into the fire warrior's face.

Green burning began.

…

_Luki…_

The thought, if it could be called that, drifted through his subconscious.

_Lucas…_

The memory, if it could be called that, drifted into his sleeping consciousness.

_Lucas._

Wasn't that…word, familiar?

Lucas.

He liked that name.

**Lucas.**

He knew that name.

"Lucas!"

\

Ness was awake.

"OMyGosh! OMygosh! What in tha world!" Ness threw back the strange, makeshift covers on the strange, makeshift bed that he had been given to use yesterday. He quickly scanned the strange, makeshift room that was now his, grabbed his cap, and ran out the door. Upon doing so, he ran into a crowd of boys, or, Onettsons, whatever, that was meeting outside of _his_houseof all places and of all times.

Oh, wait. No, the jam-packed throng of shouting, impatient children stretched down the strange, makeshift road as far as his eye could see. Well, up to the arena, anyway. How was he supposed to get through all this!

The multitudes paid him very little notice, for they were busy with their own problems; such as: someone stepping on their foot, the lack of space, and the fact that yelling repetitively did not silence the din they were in. Ness, however, didn't learn from their example, and joined in the mess of shouting to ask where Aaron was. Ness, however, eventually learned from his own example, and quit his respective racket to think.

He needed to talk to Aaron, but how? He really had no idea where the 176 year old was, and for that matter he really had no idea where he himself was…where was he? Oh, yes, that was right. But that didn't change his predicament.

"_Wait a second!_" he thought, "_What about my powers!_" It was more of a realization than a question, but nonetheless, it helped him solve his situation.

Recalling advice given to him in the previous day's training session, Ness focused on what he needed to accomplish, then stood up straight, looked to the sky, closed his eyes, and the bellowed "**WHERE'S AARON**!" with all his might.

It was a good thing the capper wasn't in possession of stage fright, or else he would currently be in need professional medical care. Countless heads turned to him, quite literally countless because Ness was sure that a good number of the faces eyeing him were out of sight.

"My name is Aaron," some random person in the onlookers said whilst raising his hand. Well, that wasn't Aaron, well, the Aaron he was looking for, anyways.

"No, No, No. The other Aaron!" There was murmuring amongst the crowd. This wasn't getting him anywhere.

Suddenly, a voice spoke up, but he couldn't understand what it was saying. He concluded that it was in another language. Then another voice answered it, heavy with accent. It was scarcely understandable.

"Naw, man. He's no girl."

"What!" Ness beamed a killer glare in the general direction of where the talk had come from, just hoping that his aim was on the guilty party. On the bright side, the comedic, though somewhat insulting, remark had kept the Onettsons entertained enough to keep their attention on the tall boy. Now he just needed to ask the right question. What was something that characterized Aaron?

"Alright then, where is the Aaron who is a part of the group that goes out of the mountain and destroys helicopters and stuff?" Well, that came out awkwardly, but a sacrifice he was willing to make if it worked.

Ness spotted a few raised eyebrows, but he had indeed asked the right question. This was communicated to him when a kid with tanned skin and a red, ruby necklace asked his neighbors, "Do ya think he means that Dumbinter guy?" They nodded and voiced their agreement, and pretty soon the entire horde was chiming in their own.

Ness wasted no time. "Where can I find him?" Simultaneously, and a bit disturbingly, the entire throng pointed towards an area to the left side of the arena. Or, in bleaker terms, they pointed to the exact opposite side of Onett.

"_Great. I have to go all the way over there._"

As the black-haired boy fought threw his former audience to where they had directed him, he heard behind him, "What? You got a death wish or somethin'?" Ness ignored him and moved on.

…

After much re-asking, redirecting, and a good amount of respites, the red-capped runner finally reached the 'Dumbinter District', as he was told it was called. Ness continually wondered what 'Dumbinter' meant, and if the 'Dumb' part of the word was actually correct or not. But he got there, that was the important part. Now, he just had to find Aaron.

"THERE you are."

Or Aaron could find him.

Turning around to see his target and his target's team (part of it), he moved up to the group, collecting his thoughts and his questions.

"Okay, first-"

One of Aaron's friends cut in, "First we need to finish your training. Now stop talking and let's get to the Arena already."

"Yes, let's." Aaron said, already turning to the domed building. His posse shortly followed suit. Ness didn't.

"Hold on a second! I have to talk to-"

"You can multitask, right?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Then let's go. You can talk while we run."

Having only a thirty second break after almost constant super-running, Ness was ready to throw up at the word 'run', but since he had an ego to keep healthy, he did his best to keep up.

It took him awhile to catch up with them, but he did it eventually. He then tried to talk. He managed to form one word, but breath failed him after that effort, and Ness fell behind again. He then decided that he would wait till they all got to the Arena and then tell them about Lucas.

They bobbed and weaved through traffic; including: Onettsons, buildings, random slabs of concrete, and chickens flying through the air at incredible speeds…no joke. The last obstacle nearly caused Ness to fall flat on his face, and he heard, "You'll have to get used to that when you're running through _this_ area."

After a few unappetizing chicken comments, the parade came to one of the many strange, makeshift entrances to the arena, which, in contrast, looked very professional as a whole. They slowed to a walk as the ragtag team passed through the long hallway that followed after the door…thing.

Then, they went toward the light and found themselves in the actual arena, which was now filled with an uncountable number of cheering Onettsons sitting/standing/flying/falling in the scores of strange, makeshift chairs surrounding the sandy fighting pit in the very middle of all the chaos. And indeed it seemed alive with fighting, but all Ness could really see from his position was random flashes of multicolored light.

But there were more pressing matters. "Okay, let me talk now. I-"

"No." Matt grabbed his arm and pulled him down the aisles to the front row of seats. Ness struggled and shouted in protest, but to no avail as the strength behind the arm towing him outclassed that of his own. Coming down to the desired file of chairs, Matt yelled to the current occupants, "DOMINTER! Get out!"

Without so much as a glance, the ordered ones jumped up and scattered away in an almost terrified fashion. Immediately after they had left, the capper was almost thrown into one of the chairs and was soon joined by Matt, Aaron, and the rest of 'Team Dominter', Ness assumed. Even though he was sure any effort to tell them about anything at all whatsoever was oh so totally not going to work, another shot was given at communication by going straight to the point.

"IHaveAFriendWhoHa-"

A hand clasped itself firmly over his mouth, and then pulled his head to face the fighting. He was then commanded, "Watch."

Telling them about Lucas now was a lost cause, the black-haired boy decided to do as he was told. He turned his eyes and, now that he was up close, saw the actual competitors in the ring.

One was short, with a blue shirt with a burned out hole in it, complimented by a white pair of startlingly white pants. His hair was almost non-existent, and Ness guessed it had been present in the shirt's incident. The other was tall, thin, tan, and wore a red bandana which stood out among his otherwise unsanitary clothes. Ness noticed this all in a second, and the next second he noticed something else.

A ball of pure, white light appeared in the short ones hands, pulsing steadily. He bounced the ball in his hand twice, then he threw it down his back, but it came up on his other side, and then went dancing all around and about the boy. In response, the tall one put his two hands together and emitted an orb of purple, lighting-like energy that turned blue at the perimeter of the sphere. He held it there, and everything stopped, even the audience's breath.

Suddenly, the short one halted the light in front of him, and reacting quickly the other thrust his energy forward, causing it to pulse dramatically. A 'huh?' was heard as the he realized his opponent hadn't done anything. Frantically now, he jumped backwards in a dodge, and shorty threw his attack but it fell in a curve at the taller one's right. On the floor, the defendant covered his eyes from the blinding and burning light shafts that the ball had produced.

He looked up, startled, to find that the shot had missed. Then he looked into the face of the shorter one, looking up, ironically.

"PK Fire."

That was the end of the match, and the tall one, hugging his burnt face, being dragged out of the ring was met with much laughter and ridicule. I mean, come on! Why not add insult to injury?

Ness gave an arched eyebrow and a 'seriously?' look towards the commotion, and then to the Dominter team, for they were laughing the loudest. Then noticing movement, he saw Aaron move over to sit beside him, trading seats with someone else.

He whispered just above the roar of the crowd, "_See there? That's what real fighting looks like._" The capper nodded absently. "_That's what we're going to train you to do…except a __**lot**__ better._" The other paid some interest to what the speaker was speaking. "_We showed you that, what we could of that, so you could get a feel for __**good **__fighting. Up next will show ya what __**normal**__ fighting looks like._" Ness turned his eyes back to the fighting ring where apparently, a new match was being assembled.

What exactly was he supposed to get from this? From watching two young, well, maybe not young, boys use magic to burn their enemy's face off? Where was the good in that? …Well, outside the large excitement factor. Suddenly, the black-haired youth realized that his hand was on his chin, making a very cliché appearance for himself. In spite of what was around him, Ness smiled and thought, "_I guess I just do that when I get philosophical._"

…

Another match has begun. Two medium sized boys, in both height and girth, step out of a large group dispersing in different directions, who are still continuing their bickering in vain. They come to the middle of the ring, and face each other.

"Check!" one cries.

"Check!" two cries.

They ready. They stare. They twitch. Then, they scream. They through themselves at each other. Sparkles inflict pain on them both, for neither has the mind to defend himself. They only believe that they are stronger than the other, and only believe that by sheer force will they bring the other down. This is a lie. A lie the find out when they see that more tactics is needed to become greater then whom they are against. This happens to these usual fighters. Every single match they are in. They never realize that only by hard work can they rise. They never realize that no one is born the best.

And now they break apart. And now they think of projectiles. And now they select a projectile. And now they yell its name, perform its stance, send it out. Out on a mission, perhaps. A mission to knock their target on their back. Both missions fail, however. And now they choose another agent to carry on this all-important mission. They lose dozens of agents, but it does not matter. Though the supply of agents is unlimited, the supply of energy is limited. And soon they have worn themselves down, catching any breath that is close enough to keep.

And now, finally, they begin to really think. How can they break the other's defense? How can they trick his guard? How can they strike at the precise moment and time? How can they win?

But they do not think hard enough. Planning their own war is essential, but not adequate. They should also know what their opponent is planning, so that they could plan it their selves. If only one of them were doing that, victory would be guaranteed. But they were not. And this match would soon join the million others in this town's long record of shameful battles.

He had no further urge to watch. He wondered, as he always did, why he had come down here, especially since he had been hiding from view all the while. Amazing how he was managing to do so, with the cheers and jeers of the crowd all around him in the arena. Hiding in shadow had become third nature to him, for he lived in it, excepting times like these. Times when he came down to Onett.

Eyes glaring under the mask at his memories, the figure slunk out of his home in the darkness and out into the familiar but strange world of the sunlight. There, he did not have to worry about being spotted, because everyone was either in the domed 'sports center', or in the houses, nursing their wounds as well as their grudges.

Eventually he reached the outskirts of Onett and the 'fence' that was the Mountain. As he clambered up the side of the rock, the 'boy' shuddered, feeling a powerful wave of the Other Flame run from his heart. He then continued up the curving wall, his mind turning to thoughts of the mysterious Other Flame.

The masked figure began to think of the Singe Legacy.

…

"That was…interesting."

"Interesting…I guess that works," said Aaron in response, getting up from his chair. They had just finished watching the second match between two unfortunately average brawlers. The style of fighting they used, though they really didn't have one, was messy and disappointing to watch. Still, the new kid had to learn what the normal opposition was.

As for 'the new kid', Ness was pondering why he was not very impressed with what he saw. After all, that was any video game he had had brought to life…Why did he feel so dissatisfied?

Thinking of his old RPGs made him think of home, which made him think of Lucas, which made him think of…you get the picture.

"Aaron, I've been trying to tell you about-"

*Sigh* "Okay, shoot."

"I have a friend who was attacked and captured, I guess, by those same helicopters that you guys destroyed, remember?" Aaron looked vaguely interested now. "I was hoping you could tell me where to find him."

Aaron sighed again, then explained, "Look, Ness, we sent a small detachment of our team when we were fighting those machines, so they rescued your friend."

"You sure?"

"Undoubtedly sure. But they came in on the opposite side of Onett that we came in on. So he's probably gettin' treatment similar to yours."

"Then why haven't I seen him?" the unknowing prodigy asked suspiciously.

"Dude. It's a big city. But the point is he's here, alright? Look, let's get your training under way; get you in some matches of your own, and when you do that you'll **definitely **see him again."

"_I suppose that sounds reasonable…_" Ness thought. Then, another big question hit his mind. "Who were the guys trying to capture us? Why would they do that?"

Aaron groaned full out, and the student couldn't figure out whether it was from the fact the answer should be obvious or out of sheer annoyance. "DUDE! Can't ya tell! I was the humans!"

"_The humans…_" Ness prodded further, intrigued. "Why?"

Groaning again, Aaron decided to finish this explanation that should've been obvious to any Onettson with half a brain. "They're afraid of us. Jealous. Stupid. Here's a story, kid. About 170 years ago, when I was little, like sixteen or somethin', the humans started getting on to me 'cause I was different. They even tried to kill me once or thrice, and that is what eventually led me to Onett. Let me tell ya, that's how the story goes for most Onettsons, so you can bet that the humans were trying to do the same thing to you as they tried to do to me."

The capper blinked several times. He was going to need to let that soak in for awhile before he could truly grasp it. He suddenly realized that he was being led once again, but this time to the back of the Arena. "Where are we going!"

"Training," he heard from behind him.

"Get ready to learn some new stuff." That had been Aaron.

Ness nodded absently as he walked down a staircase nearly invisible in the shadows, listening to the maddened roars of an audience, eager for another juicy fight.

"_I guess this is turning out all right._"

**HALT, AWIRT! Before we go any further into the ending notes, let's get one thing straight in our writer/reviewer relationship. I've been getting a lot of one-liner reviews lately, and it's really starting to bug me. I mean, I know in this age of the internet that it is hard to write a long/medium sized review, and I don't expect mini-essays, but come on, these aren't Youtube comments. These are fanfiction REVIEWS. In a review, I would like to know what you think on how I did, and if there were any particular bad parts of it that need work. Comments on good aspects of the chapter are appreciated, as are comments of any sort. In fact, all that can be fitted in a few sentences. I'm not actually mad, and don't think I'm gonna flip out if I don't see all of that in a review, it's just that a writer needs constructive criticism to improve. So if you can, take a little extra time composing your review.**

**Now that that's over with, let's get to the replies!**

**roseal: Well, you certainly wanted Ness to remember about his friend, and that's what you got! What did you think of it? And somehow you left two signed reviews… fanfiction glitches are so weird! Lucas was actually supposed to have a part in this chapter, but due to me adding in that third POV and the overall length of this episode, that I decided that Lucas would not be in this chapter, but the first POV in the one following.**

**Innocence: I'm glad that you're glad that you got to see the arena, and you got to see even MORE of the arena! Doesn't that make you glad! *ahem* and wow, you'd still really like to see more? That makes me feel special!**

**TheMysticalQ: Okay, willing slave thing's kinda weird, but let's move on, shall we? In response to the short chapter, I made the longest one yet. Yeah, at the end I was writing pretty quickly, because I got excited with what was going on. I really can't see how chapter four could explain everything, but that's coming from the guy who knows the whole plot. I would tend to think chapter five, but I think I see where CarlineN was coming from. Ness timeline will catch up to Lucas's, I can tell you that.**

**oceanlover4ever: How was Mother 3? Never played any of the games myself, so I'm curious to how you thought this one went. Things are getting interesting? That's great! *does the chicken dance for joy* oh, sorry. Yes, you should remember ALL the mysterious monologues, even the details. What did you think of the two in this chapter? And it's fine that you have that vibe.**

**PenfullofChaos819: Wow. THAT was a long review (but don't think I don't appreciate it). I'll admit I was getting a little annoyed that your review wasn't there, but that was mostly because I was looking forward to the length that your reviews guarantee. Don't feel bad if there was anything taking up your time, I understand. And if not, I still understand. Now, onward!**

**Glad to see that my 'mysterious introduction' went well. After looking up 'Nihilism', I see that your word choice is spot on. And ol' Luki here is going to get more and more understanding of what his NEW life is going to work like. Ah, yes. The Evil Market has been struggling economically ever since they broke in to their own Federal Reserve. You can fool around, I don't mind.**

**Ness will be doing a bit more quick adapting. Heh-heh, no worries. Awkward puns are accepted. Yes, we all knew that, and your notice of my descriptions had me try and put the same quality into this chapter. How did I do?**

**Wait. Does your strange reaction to my using the name Matt mean your name is Matt? Hmmm…**

**Foolish Duo time!**

**Metal: No, Metal. You couldn't have lived without the 'foolish duo'. Why? Because you're artificially alive, not literally alive! You're not the real Sonic!… Aw, it's nice to see you show the good guy under that hard, grouchy exterior. So I won't insult you any further…for now.**

**Silver: Yeah, his speech surprised me too, Silver. Silvia would be proud! CutPro? I like it. I'll keep it. I won't call it any of those things but instead identify you as lucky. So, lucky you! Oh, yeah! Breaking the forth wall for the win! You all are awesome.**

**Godspeed back to you, sir!**

**CarlineN: Hope to read you next time!**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	8. Tipped Scales

***sigh* you'd expect me to be faster in the summer, wouldn't you, AWIRT? Well, I would too, but July was REALLY, REALLY busy for me, and then I had a birthday, so I hope you can understand. Understand? Good.**

**Also, confession time. I was working on something else to post for a few days, but then I decided to continue my work on this instead, and to continue work on the other project later.**

**First disclaimer: Cut Productions does not own Earthbound. Why? BECAUSE I DON'T NEED SOMEONE ELSE'S COPYRIGHTED CHARACTERS TO BECOME FAMOUS AND SUCCESFUL! *checks two main characters of story* Well, maybe a little…**

**So, without further ado…**

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 8: Tipped Scales

In spite of himself, Lucas smiled gloomily at his comrade, who never seemed to truly lose his spirits. Even though he had just been shocked cruelly by a gapping slab of humanoid stone, Comrade still showed a somewhat playful attitude through his choice few words. This of course made one wonder whether or not he actually knew what was going on, but that didn't stop everyone from taking a liking to this particular prisoner.

Lucas did not know his name in reality, but he called him Comrade simply because that was who he was to him. In his new world, the old phrase 'What's in a name?' had no hold. Everything was in a name, for here one's name was defined by one's actions (or, so Lucas surmised). Lucas tried to guess what his name was to the others, and the gloomy smile lost the smile and kept only the gloom.

He shook his head. Lucas wanted to be happy, but that was also the same as delusional, so the boy shied away from both.

Turning back to the present task; as not to become another target of the end of the shocking sticks, the pale youth braced his foot hard against the stone-thing floor. Tonight he and four others were pushing a pole attached to their forearms by a form-fitting clasp into a pit of muck. Each time the bottom of the rod touched the bottom of the pit; the shadowy goo would change nature as it flashed orange and fiery light would shoot straight up and sting all flesh in its path.

When this happened, Lucas would leap back as far as he could from the explosion of aura. Unfortunately (as always), he could not get his forearm out of the way, as it was locked to the pole, still deep in the thick goo. Thus, each time the shaking boy dared to push the shaft downwards; terrible, mind-splitting pain was the only end of the endeavor.

Now he could refuse to do the death-dealing (or so he assumed) work, like Comrade had recently done, but then the statues would do to him what they had recently done to Comrade. But the biggest challenge in rebuttal was willpower, something that Lucas had been lacking lately.

So he decided it was safer to continue submitting his arm to being burned.

…

Step to the side.

_Gotcha._

Step to the other side, now.

_Sure thing._

Step back to the first side.

_Why not?_

Leap forward.

_Okay._

Oh, wait! Now you're going to have to roll.

_Well, I don't wanna die, do I? Let's roll!_

Ness continued to respond to the dodge commands instinct was giving him. He wanted to throw an attack at Tim, but the barrage of skillfully placed attacks was saying otherwise. But at least his sidesteps, front rolls, and ducks were getting plenty of practice. _Plenty_ of practice. So much that Ness was starting to get sick of it.

"_Time to do something. But what's something?_" Ness questioned himself.

Out of nowhere (what a weird phrase), a loud battle cry thundered its way to the capper's ears, and he turned to see his opponent, Tim, charging at him full Onettson speed. When he was a few meters away, the Dominter jumped.

4 seconds till impact.

Time to do that something_._

3 seconds till impact.

_Terrific! ...what is it?_

2 seconds till impact.

Try this! Say-

"PK Landwall!"

1 second till impact.

Ness looked up to see solid stone, slanted over him protectively from its hold in the ground. At the same time hearing a crash, he looked around his cover and saw Tim lying prostrate on the dusty floor, arms and legs sticking out starfish style. Then he looked back to his earthen shield.

Another command came from instinct. Ness silently thanked the air for the fact that his victim was directly in front of him, and then stood up to full height. Against another message from instinct about the pain involved, he thrust his arm and foot into the landwall.

Tim jumped up as the new kid had cried 'PK Landslide' and catapulted himself over the oncoming obstacle. Setting his feet on the top of the rock as it passed, he launched himself at the younger fighter.

"Yu-Whoa!" the capper said as he hastily tried to back up, and tripped on his own feet, dropping hard to the ground. The consequences for this slip-up were severe. Tim landed on his fallen form and put his hands to Ness's throat and released a barrage of sparkles, cutting breath short.

Struggling to regain control over his body, the capper managed to seize his assailant's wrists. Then calling up all the calm and control he could muster, his own sparkles entered the mix. This did not faze the other, as the only reaction it bought Ness was a pair of gritted teeth.

For what seemed like hours they lied there. But he was weakening, his strength fading. Sweat clung to his black bangs, and his eyes squinting through the agonizing pain. Just as he thought he was going to pass out, Tim released his grip, stood up and walked away.

"You lost."

Ness remained on the floor, panting. He then heard: "Dude, you just got RIPPED." (Ness had earlier concluded that here 'ripped' meant the same thing as 'pwned')

Then: "No I didn't, I just won!" That had been Tim.

The first speaker again: "Yeah, but we just picked this guy up, like, a week ago. And in that light you were downright pathetic."

Back to Tim: "I was going easy on him! Besides that, he only hit me ONCE!"

Back to the first speaker: "And you're using that as an excuse?"

Tim: "Well, duh!"

First speaker: "If you can't realize the idiocy behind that, I'm just gonna leave you to yourself."

Tim growled.

Ness smirked and opened his eyes, despite his exhaustion. Still panting, he pushed himself up and walked towards the entrance to the practice arena, or, in his case, the exit. Once out, he walked a few steps forward, and then flopped down into the seat behind and below him. He caressed his numb neck with both hands attending to their respective sides as he watched Tim and the one originally addressed as the 'First Speaker' get into a fight below him.

"Landwall. That's a new one." Aaron came over and sat a couple of seats away from the exhausted Onettson.

Ness smiled wearily. "Well, I had to improvise." Then thinking of yet another question, he asked, "Wait, are you sayin' that no one's ever done that move before?"

"That should've been made obvious by what I just said."

"Uhhh, okay," he responded distractedly. A moment past. He was then commanded to watch. The boy cracked an eyelid.

"Watch what?"

"The match." It was at that time that Ness remembered about the two arguing Dominter, who were currently coming to blows. Surprisingly, the rest of the team took absolutely zero interest, and didn't even flinch when a brief explosion shook the floor. They gave off a very bored vibe.

Now feeling even more out of place, he turned to Aaron, "Um, do fights like these happen all the time?"

Turning his tan head to the skies in thought, the other answered, "Well, all over Onett, stuff like this happens about a hundred times a day, while only three times a day in this team." He looked back at the inquisitor, "Does that answer your question, newbie?"

Ignoring the last word of the Dominter's response, Ness concluded that the info sounded sort of reasonable, if he stretched his mind a bit. Nonetheless, still reasonable.

"You're not watching."

Oh, right. Turning his now non-heavy eyes and calm body towards the ensuing chaos of battle, Ness marveled at how fluid the fight seemed to flow. Never a pause in the action, never a slip in form, and apparently, never a sweat on the brow.

"PK Slice!" cried Tim, rapidly closing the gap between him and his opponent, slashing his hand in front of him as the gap all but faded away. Following his upper arm appeared a silvery streak of light, nearly giving its presumably fatal touch to the intended target. However, the split second the 'PK Slice' vanished; this person retaliated with a 'PK Punch'. This Timothy dodged by turning his body sideways and grabbing on to the other's shoulder, quickly saying, "PKSpark!" As the name would imply, what seemed to be sparks flew from under the assailant's palm and a maniacal popping sound accompanied it as pain was induced on the PK Puncher.

Ness's eyes widened as they beheld the latter grab Tim's arm and then do a full flip, still carrying his burden. The seized one crashed without a shred of grace into the hard ground back first, grunting as his rival landed smoothly on top of him, ready to continue the skirmish.

This all happened in seven seconds.

Biting his lip as the tension of watching the excursion began to get to him, the capper glanced around the large room. As far as he could tell, he and Aaron were the only ones watching the match. There was no way he could understand why; this was the most exciting event he'd ever seen in any arena before!

Eventually, a tie was proclaimed by the rest of the team, who stepped in because they were tired of the noise. Then remarking on how late it was (it seemed a little after 10:00), everyone except Ness left the Arena, saying they were going to 'party'. Even though he inquired what exactly that meant, the young Onettson was left to himself, confused and honestly, a bit lonely.

Three minutes later, he found himself looking out the window at the star-encircled moon, his thoughts turned to his friend, who was somewhere out there in the chaotic streets of Onett. "_I'll find him,_" he reassured himself. He turned his gaze to the fighting ring, the words of Aaron echoing in his head. "_I just need to get into the Arena first._"

Ness knew it was going to be a long night of training, but what he didn't know was that it would be the first of many.

…

That had been push number 90. That had also been burn number 90. Now for rest number 12.

"HUUAGGHHHH!"

That had been shock number 3 for taking too much of a rest. Lucas really shouldn't take that much rest. Time for push number 91. No, mercy has been given. The guards have taken hold of his arm, and now for cell return number 28.

As they march down the hallway, eye contact with fellow prisoner number 207 occurs. Now the door to his cell opens; the number of times this has happened before has been forgotten. Now

Now-

Now…

N-o-W… A-W-A-K-E!

Lucas struggled out of his trance-like state. He slowly and cautiously brought up memories of his recent mental condition, and would have shuddered at them it he had the strength, either mental or physical. Everything in his mind was clouded, but through the fog he managed to find that the stupor that had claimed him was not in any way natural.

He thought more about how he had been acting, and he didn't like what he found. How could he have gone to such disarray? His mind only comprehending the fact of the present, and the facts of all that before that related to the present. Understanding only enough to get him through the day.

Wait… isn't that all he wanted now, just to get through the da-

Lucas jerked an inch and then fell to his knees and hands, gasping for breath, any breath. The trance had begun to resurface again through that thought, but had lost its former potency. Therefore, a quick change of mind had halted it, but anything fast made Lucas confused these dark days.

He thought more. His trance. Had he really been in a trance? Was this his fate? He had expected one much more normal, much more boring. Excitement isn't all it was told to be.

He was trying to think about more than his weakened mind could handle. Manifesting his inner stress in his outer self, the boy clutched his head, squeezing as hard as he could, forcing thought out of his brain. Then, he stopped. He stopped squeezing, stopped thinking, and looked at his right hand. When it had touched his head, it had felt disconnected and yet familiar.

All too familiar. This was the arm that he had burned over and over again that night at 'work'. It looked grey, and felt lifeless, sort of. Lucas tried moving it. Nothing happened. Lucas tried again. The fingers moved a little. Lucas tried again, with more force. This time his hand moved. But the movement was hindered, feeling almost weighted. At the very least it still worked.

Lucas shook his head powerfully soft. He wanted release from these worries. And that release would come with sleep. So the blonde lay down on the hard floor in front of the barred door. Just as he was about to close his eyes, he noticed something else about his arm. Something horrible.

He looked at the floor. He looked at the wall. He looked at the guards outside his window. He looked at his arm. They were all the same. All grey, all twisted. Lucas suddenly realized the truth. His trance, his arm, why he was here, all made horrifying sense.

The same stone substance that the statues were made of had enveloped his arm. They were turning him into one of them.

…

"PK…!" With his eyes the capper looked over the various targets that he could aim for, and with his mind looked over the various powers he could use. "…Ah, whatever." Indecisive for the moment, Ness simply dove over to the punching bag and rained a barrage of ringers on it.

The bag was attached to two chains, one on the top and one on the bottom. The upper chain was hooked to a small sideways wall about seven feet above the bald head of the bag, and the lower chain was hooked to the wall two feet below the base. They allowed the combat sack quite a bit of slack, letting it sag out almost to the floor. The purpose of this design was to make the punching bag jerk around unpredictably when hit, but end up swinging back to its assailant with more force than before. This forced users to exert much strength to keep from being hurtled to the dust, and to keep a close eye on where it would strike next. It was a simple, excellent, and rigorous training tool. And that was exactly why many Onettsons stayed away from it.

Ness, however, used it every day. He had always liked a challenge, and he found this object to be just that on his first late night training alone five weeks ago.

He had learned much in the past five weeks; how to give your sparkles (ringers, as they were actually called) more bite, and dozens of PK powers. He had learned that the Arena wasn't just a pastime here in Onett; it was the city's life. He had learned the Dominter team was the best team of all the fourteen in Onett; they only took highly gifted fighters into the team and harshly refused anyone else. But most of all, he had learned to fight.

Every day he fought at least two matches against one Dominter member or the other. The cool thing was each time he learned something new, be it a power, tip, or strategy. Also, the battles seemed to get progressively harder, but that was most likely because he was getting progressively better. And that was exactly what he wanted; hence the nightly workout routine.

Despite its name, Ness kicked the punching bag, and readied himself for the rebound. When it did come (a little suddenly from the middle left), the boy jumped into and out of it, propelling himself like a torpedo to the forest of timber targets behind him.

The first one entered his peripheral vision. He turned his body as if to belly-flop into it. Against the wind, he stuck his arms and legs out cat-style, generating ringers through them for reinforcement. Just as he reached his destination, Ness gave each of his appendages a kick. Then came the impact, or lack thereof. Slicing through the two solid inches of wood, he flashed a grin as it splintered pleasurably.

Of course, the glory decided to come to a screeching halt. After the flying shards cleared before his vision, another target came into focus-its sturdy support leg right where his head was going to land. He closed his eyes, wishing to see no more. He felt, however, a lot. Too much by his own standards. Rather anyone's standards. It hurt. As if that wasn't enough, his body skidded and took another support leg to the back.

For a while, Ness just lay there. When it finally came to him that he should get up, he reluctantly did so. Careful not to ram his head into any more targets, the boy made his way back to the bleacher-like seating surrounding the practice arena. Collapsing on the seat by his water container/time keeper (as long as there was still water in it he kept training), he dared to take off his hat in order to run his hand through his dark hair. He then grabbed his makeshift water bottle, and swiftly downed all the remaining contents, thereby ending his session.

Without second thought, he managed to push himself into a standing position, and woozily walked to the exit and exited.

…

Was he lost? Or was he not lost? Either way, Ness was certain that he was lost on the subject of being lost. Many dark alleyways populated the streets of Onett, and this one looked the same as all the others. In light of this, he peered at his surroundings, hoping to find something that would distinguish his location. This was unsuccessful. He was definitely lost.

Standing would only get him to one place: right where he was. So, on he walked into the shadowy lane ahead.

Amongst the matter of where he was, also present was the matter of the throbbing in his forehead. "_Apparently,_" he pondered, "_I hit that leg harder than I thought._" He caressed it, looking down and moving straight.

Unbeknownst to him, he was nearly half-asleep, and barely noticed it when a wall met him. But he did notice and turned right or left, he was not sure, and walked for a few more minutes. If only he had been awake, maybe he would have heard the voices and the footsteps coming his way. Maybe he could have taken a different course. But he didn't.

"Hey, who do we have here?" A voice strung with obvious ill intent forced its way into Ness's calming mind. Not exactly a fair trade.

"Looks like a lost dope," came another. "Hey Lost Dope! Where ya goin'?" The two, no, wait, three got only a sour look for a response. They weren't satisfied.

They pressed on, "I don't think he has a home, guys," said the shortest one.

The tallest one answered before the middle one had a chance, "Oh, no? Why not?"

Now the middle one answered, "Well, it's obvious! Nobody would give this guy a home! He's far too ugly!" They laughed at that. Ness didn't. He stood up straight and stared at them.

The short one again. "No, no, no. I've seen this guy before, yeah, with…the Dumbinter. Those jerks probably just make him sleep in street!" The said 'guy' glared at them. Such simple insults. So surprisingly effective.

He'd had enough. "Well, since you people seem to have _so _much fun by yourselves, I'm just gonna leave." And with that he walked towards them, aiming his feet for a gap the three of them made over to the left.

The tall one stepped into the gap. Ness knew they weren't gonna let him pass. A few ringers danced hidden behind his fingers. He talked, "Hey, now, wait a minute. You can't just walk out on us like that. You're part of the Dumbinter squad, so we have to give you some-Ugghhh!"

"You done?" the capper said cockily, ringers running gleefully up and down his hand, relishing the pain they had just inflicted.

Tall looked straight into his assailant's eyes, being one of the few boys of the height to do so, replying, "No, it just started!" swiping his sparkly hand up to the other's chin.

The other was ready. He jumped quickly to his left and rolled on reaching contact with the ground. Coming up in a half-knee stance, he immediately faced his audience, who had obviously unsuspected a new fighter to have such agility. Encouraged, he unleashed his first real attack on them: "PK Slice!" The opposition jumped back, obviously unsuspecting this as well. A smile entered his lips. He was ready for this…or so he thought.

Middle growled, "Looks like tough guy here got some extra training!" As if on cue, they all ran in after that. They all shouted indiscernible names of different powers, sending two projectiles at the trainee and all of a sudden a whip was in the short one's hand. Ness just managed to avoid getting clipped by the dual shots, but certainly was not expecting or ready for a glowing orange rope to grab his wrist. When it retracted, it felt as if his hand had just been torn off. Ness even quickly checked to make sure it was still there. It was, but there was also a PK Punch headed his direction.

When the capper stopped sliding on the damp ground, he peered through his unclear eyes at the enemy. The enemy was running in fast, but he had to think faster; and what was more, he did. Shifting his weight up to his torso and neck, he lifted up his legs, and then used his momentum to bring himself up to his feet. Upon doing so, he inaudibly said two words.

The three were ready to cripple this new Dumbinter member, angry at all the embarrassing defeats they had been handed at the hands of the one's team. But just as they were about to reach him, the land in front of them shot up and thrust the trio back. The solid wall that their backs met with didn't offer any sympathy either. And to make matters worse, the landslide was far from done, rushing in with even more force than before.

_**BOOM!**_

That put an end to his wall of rock. Ness perked his ears up when he heard the delightful threats of, "We're gonna kill you for that!"

"_Oh good!_" he thought, "_It worked!_"

On his heel he turned and he ran like there WAS a tomorrow, and that tomorrow was the prom. In other words, very fast. He could hear them right behind him, throwing insult after insult at him. "_If only they knew._"

Finally, a wall loomed up out of the distance, directly in his path and that's exactly where the sprinter wanted it. Just a few feet away, he jumped up and set his feet on the concrete erection, then exploded off of it and into the three. Short was first in line, and the capper extended his arms Superman-style and quickly removed him from the equation. Unfortunately for him, to do this he had to direct his flight path lower than he should have. Next thing the capper knew his forehead collided with Tall's leg, causing him to make some quick yet serious thought on irony. While this tripped the opponent and cause him to fall, it also caused him to fall on Ness.

It was the beginning of the end. Once the biggest foe realized where he was and who he was on top of, he pushed himself up and grabbed the lone fighter by the back of his neck. Even though his victim struggled, it was an easy task to lock his arms behind him in a full-nelson style fashion.

"_This CANNOT be good!_" Ness nearly yelled in the confines of his head, and frantically tried to find a way out of his predicament. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't, but he did not find it fast enough.

The other two thugs lined up in front of the Dominter, and decided to make a ceremony out of it. "This,"-Middle threw a ringer enhanced punch into his target's cheek-"is for the time your friends broke my arm!" He drew his arm back again. "And this,"-_SMACK!-_"is for the time they beat me in five seconds!"

Ness glared at him through weak eyes. "You're that bad, huh?" he ventured to say, a weary half-smile crawling across his face.

"You're gonna regret ever talking after I'M finished with you!" Middle cried in complete outrage. Following up this outburst was a frenzy of strikes, hitting everywhere from face to gut. Then it stopped as short wanted a turn.

"Move outa the way! Let me handle him!" He shoved his accomplice aside and took a few steps back. "This is how you take out a Dumbinter! PK…Thunder!" Aglow went the small boy, Purple electricity wrapping itself around him. And from this storm a lightning bolt arose, of the same color and the same energy. It started up, but then came down, straight for Ness.

It was over. It was all over. Powerless in the tall one's hold, the capper almost submitted to his fate.

But only almost. Suddenly instinct was back, back with one command; one memory.

_To accomplish it, don't focus on the stuff everyone else is going to be seeing, just focus on the goal of doing the attack._

He DID NOT want it to end here. He DID NOT want that bolt to hit him. And most of all, more than anything else, he did CERTAINLY NOT want to LOSE!

…

The lighting came only a few inches from the boy and there was a purple flash of energy. Short would have been satisfied, except for one thing: the flash hadn't come from the PK Thunderbolt, it had come from the Dominter himself. The street thug couldn't believe his eyes; the kid was surrounded by a field of violet energy. It was a PSI magnet: a defense mechanism that could heal the user if a projectile entered it, corresponding to the damage it would have caused.

"But that's not possible! The can only be generated from the hands!" he shouted out his thoughts. Short looked back to his tall friend, only to see him-despite his grasp-being thrown by the Dominter over his head and onto the ground, face-first. Middle rushed in, preparing to make some hurt. That did happen, but only to him. The Dumbinter had gone berserker.

Now he was coming after him. Not willing to let himself be silenced yet again by a person from this team, the thug ran, fast and hard. But luck was not with him today.

"PK Snag!" came the Dominter's voice, and a green glowing chain shot up and grabbed his ankle. Short fell on his nose, but scrambled over to face the sky when a shadow fell over him. The loner had caught up with him, and he uttered the name of a move that almost made the thug laugh, until he saw no more.

"PK Fire."

…

Somehow, somehow, Ness had done it. He had defeated them, and now he was safe. Shambling down the now darker alleyways, the wave of energy that had filled him when the bolt had taken impact passed away. This left him almost breathless, for now the pain of his injuries came to life and ruled his skin and body. Weakness. It was as if he couldn't blink, but he could.

But he was alive. That was all that mattered. Alive and well, alive and well, alive and…

The ground was suddenly much closer, and then-

**CLIFF HANGER!**

**First off, I AM SO SO SO SO SO SO SOOOOOOOO SORRY THAT I TOOK SOOOOO LONG TO POST THIS! WILL YOU EVER FIND IT IN THY HEART TO FORGIVE ME!? I GROVEL AT THY LITERARY FEET!**

**At the very ****least****, the chapter was my longest yet. I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN I FINALLY FINISHED THIS! I EVEN CELEBRATED BY LISTENING TO 'WIND WAKER UNPLUGGED' ON YOUTUBE. Now, at first, this chapter wasn't the most polished, but thanks to some good ol'fashioned editing (and confidence boosting) with Maracta I got it done! Also, I'm going back to school in a few days *sniff*.**

**I won't put it off any longer; on to the replies!**

**Roseal: Are you now? Well, I guess it's nice to see you give the Dominter a glare, that should prove interesting. And by popular request, I HAVE CONTINUED! WILL YOU EVER FORGIVE ME FOR TAKING SO LONG!?**

**Oceanlover4ever: That's a well-put quote. After watching a few video reviews on Earthbound, I can now see what you're talking about, and it does sound quite masterful. Oh, by the way, I don't know the ending.**

**Well, I'm honored that you would go to the trouble of rereading my previous chapters, and I'm encouraged that you say that this story is intriguing. Also, my sincere thanks. I've never noticed my ability to do that before, but it does still need some work. Oh, you'll need a lot more than a sniper rifle to kill Aaron, if that's what you're thinking.**

**PK Auralight Omega: From the little I know, I'd bet Lucas would be my favorite character as well. I hope you like this chapter.**

**TheMysticalQ: Thanks. I almost repeated that mistake in this chapter, but thanks to you I didn't. I'm glad that you're glad that God saved me from a…gruesome fate. I still get chills thinking about it. I think it was favored all around that Ness remembered Lucas, and how did you enjoy his parts in this chapter?**

**PenfullofChaos: Nope! No night calling, but I'm glad you reviewed.**

**Universal knowledge indeed. I couldn't tell which of the two fire wielders you were referring to here; could you please clarify that? And are you saying that Lucas is in this scene, or were you talking about another?**

**Yeah, Ness is yet to learn in this category. Guess he skipped school the day they taught it. Yeah, that awkward scene came to me as I was writing Ness stepping through the door, and I loved it. Yes, the arena is simple, but the mere scale of it is a bit breathtaking, at least that's how I see it. Yes, 'Dominter' was very intentional. I like what you said about fighting there. Sorta philosophical. You'll see how the roles end up, you'll see…**

**An omen indeed. Ya know, when I write mysteriously like that scene, I always do it so well and so quickly. Makes me want to do it all the time. Ahh… so you're accusing Aaron as well? I must be doing a good job with him! I was? Well, I didn't mean to be harsh.**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	9. Warrior

_It bit and ripped_

_As it jumped and dipped,_

_And fought against Cold's freezing grip,_

_On that fateful day,_

_It cascaded down_

_The dry wood brown,_

_All spread cross the ground_

_On that fateful day,_

_It sent shivering light,_

_Through the night_

_To the aid of trying sight,_

_On that fateful day,_

_One flame kindled,_

_One yet unlit,_

_And would remain_

_To lie and sit,_

_One flame kindled,_

_One yet unfound,_

_Red would rise, Red would abound,_

_But Green, Oh, Green,_

_Never earned its renown_

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 9: Warrior

"- Yeah! And…oh, look; another corpse!"

"Woooow. Looks like somebody needs to learn some manners. This guy sure…"

...

"And here's another one!"

"Wonder where the victor is."

"Ah, who really cares, anyway?"

"Your right. Let's move on."

…

"Hot enough to fry an Onettson on the sidewalk, eh?"

"Yeah! Maybe we should come by later and see if he's ready to eat!"

"…dude, you're gross."

….

"_You don't remember much, do you?"_

"_No. Something seems very wrong here, and I can't tell what it is…"_

"_Forget me for a second…you're in pain, aren't you?"_

"_Uggghhh…yeah, a lot of pain. Whoa – A LOT of pain!"_

"_It's really warm, isn't it?"_

"…_yeah, that too."_

"_You don't feel that fuzzy anymore, do you?"_

"_Not…really. Everything feels a bit hard…"_

The other leaned in. _"Try waking up…"_

"Yeeeeah!" Ness pulled himself from his dream, back into the hard, cold world of reality. Check that, hard, HOT world of reality. In an effort to conserve his skin, he shot up onto his feet, hoping that he hadn't burned anything.

"_What am I doing HERE?!_" Then the fight of the previous night came flooding back into his mind. He gritted his teeth at the recollected moment of being hit, again and again and again. But if his memory served him right, he had won, and that was all that counted. At least he hoped.

He quickly looked over his body. His left arm was grey with debris, there was a vicious-looking scrape running up the front side of his right leg, there was a hole in the middle of his shirt showing off a large, ugly bruise, and a woodpecker had made a home in his head (metaphorically, of course).

"_Where am I again? Well, I should probably know that…Oh, that's right: I'm lost!_" Ness groaned. He already felt half-dead, and so now of course he had to be lost. "_Wait a second…_" Looking behind him, he saw the Arena, looming, as always, up above all other buildings, clearly signaling where to go.

Not wanting to traverse the maze of alleys, he looked to the main road. It was filled with Onettsons traveling this way and that, but most were heading to the capper's right. So, Ness followed them and went with the flow, guessing that it was going to his destination.

Almost as soon as he got on the street he regretted it. Glances and stares graced him constantly, often carrying the heavy weight of judgment. What made it worse is that he clearly wasn't the only bruised pedestrian, some even walking around with nearly their entire face masked by bandages. Being injured wasn't something uncommon in Onett, so why was he getting all the attention? Ness just forced himself to keep walking.

An intersection in the road came up, and immediately the boy recognized it. Well, at least the other side of it, as it was the path he usually used to get from his house to the domed structure. He then turned onto the Great Road…or the Fighting Road, or the Big Way, or the Popular Path, whatever. The road had many names. The point was that that it was the grand entrance to the Arena. It was wide and open, representing the building it led to in its size, a bold contrary to all the other crammed in architecture of the town. There were even a few healthy plants in the middle where an Onettson would perform 'PK Water' on their way inside. The place was relatively sacred.

Knowing full well that he would get even more looks here, Ness quickened his pace and ignored the inevitable. He shook his head; since when did he care about how he was viewed? "_This place is getting to me,_" he said inwardly as he passed through the entrance. "_Well, it's dark in here anyway, so I don't have to worry about it._"

…

"Hey! Who let in the zombie!?"

"Myself. And, if you don't mind, I'm gonna go take a look in the mirror," Ness returned with a sarcastic note playing on his voice. There was a mirror which was barely used by the bleachers of the training room; no one knew how or when it got there nor did anyone care. Today someone used it, and it was a very revealing tool.

Zombie turned out to be a very accurate description. Blood had run down the right side of his face, drying and crusting up over the night. The once bloody wound on his forehead was surrounded by a plethora of bruises. His left eye was a black one, and the same side of his lips was puffed up and suspended up above its normal position.

"WOAH! ...your face is the first thing to scare me in a long time, kid." It was Aaron. In return, the capper gave him a glare. "What? Training by yourself to hard for you?" The glare continued.

"No. Those three guys weren't so bad either," he said as he walked away from the mirror and past the Dominter. Just as he hoped, the said Dominter decided to interrogate.

"What three guys?"

"Yeah, on the way back to my house," Ness began with that, and then told the whole story, with the exception of the details. Ness was not particularly a 'detail person'.

Not surprisingly, Aaron did not seem very impressed by his story. The only thing he did afterwards was say "Get used to it," and walk away.

The student scowled at the floor. "At least I won…" he said under his breath, deep in thoughts.

"No, no you didn't win," said Aaron, jerking him back out of his head. "You SURVIVED." He gestured to his body, "Look at you! Does that look like a win!?" There was a silence. "Well?"

"No."

"You're right, believe it or not. There's a difference between fighting off the enemy and beating the enemy. And until you beat them, the score remains unsettled." And with that the teacher turned on his heel and left him.

The bloodied boy pondered over his words. He hadn't won, eh? Well, he hadn't lost either. But the question was does the absence of winning mean losing?

Ness didn't know the answer to that, but he did know this: whatever he had accomplished, it wasn't victory. He looked to the training ring. "_Check that. It isn't victory YET._"

…

"You ARE aware that I am going easy on you, right?" said Link, a younger Dominter (only 87 years old) with a bad habit of making jokes. He was kinder than the rest of the team, but that wasn't saying much.

"I was hopping so, yeah," Ness answered rather hurriedly, ducking under a yellow lightning-like 'PK Bolt' bent on chiseling out his hair. It passed him and a 'ZAP!' was heard from somewhere behind him. But there was no time to dwell on that, as dozens of purple needles were soaring through the air targeted at and all around his current position. This left him with no time or room to dodge and this left him panicking. In a jaw-like fashion, the wave of spikes sped towards the ground. With some last-split-millisecond thinking, the trainee spread out his body as flat as he could against an imaginary wall, hoping he could fit through the cracks in the line of teeth. He saw a violet streak pass his eyes, felt one graze his hand, and heard one rip through the back of his shirt. The next second all the purple was gone, and that was his cue to catch a quick breather.

"PK Mace!" But only a quick one.

Link had launched himself into the air, a pointy, orange weapon (giving off a slight aura) in hand. Landing not far from Ness, he made eye contact. Then, grinning, he charged. When he was five feet away, he swung to the capper's head. The said capper promptly ducked, uttering the words 'PK Shock'. The mace though, seemed to appear out of thin air and protected its wielder from the blast. However, the collision of the two energies eliminated both from existence. Not that it really mattered. They were all expendable.

Both fighters knew that it was not smart decision to stay in such close proximity with one another. Thus, they both PK jumped back about ten feet each. They made eye contact once again. Link's grin returned for an encore. Ness knew what that meant. Pretty soon he was grasping another glowing, orange handle. And wouldn't you know it, that handle was attached to yet another spiky sphere of pain.

"_He must like Melee combat,_" the younger one thought. "_I need a counter…_" He searched for such a thing, even as his adversary came and gave him a sharp uppercut, and then jumped up and rammed the weapon into the floor where he had previously been. Then his sought-for idea came to his mind.

He immediately put the plan into action. At least, he would have liked to. To execute it, he needed to somehow land a strike on the opposing force. At least he could have some adequate time to find a way in as he was getting the hang of dodging the attempted blows…which meant that he had found a pattern in the attack…which meant he should be using that against his opponent.

Duh.

So he did. Link had just stabbed at him while taking a step forward, and Ness had evaded to the side. The position they were in added with general attack-pattern he had observed made it clear what the Dominter would try next: swing the weapon toward his face while extending his leg to trip him. Focusing hard, the capper (aided by ringers) jumped over the inconvenient foot, turned over in midair, and managed to jam his left foot into Link's body while diving away from the, ah, safety hazard.

THIS time not running into any obstructive legs of any sort, the diver rolled gracefully (well, maybe not _gracefully_) into a half-knee position. Meanwhile, the other stumbled back, no longer carrying the glowing arm as it had been canceled out by his lack of concentration after being hit. He regained balance and looked at Ness. Ness stood up, looked back, and grinned. And just as planned, the Dominter charged forward, a new attack already charging up in his mind. But this fight belonged to the youth now, something which this wrathful Onettson could not comprehend.

It was time to pull out the signature move. Ness took in a breath and waited for Link to come into the proper distance; close enough not to be far, but far enough to be out of range. He didn't have a concrete idea of just exactly how many feet that was, but he was hoping he didn't have to. He discarded the thought, though, as instinct warned him that now was the time. With not a second to lose, his hand and knee dropped to the ground as he cried, "PK Landwall!"

His timing could not have been better. From under Link's feet a rumble, then a mass of stone surged up and sent him and his body hurtling up into the air, only to be brought down by a green glowing chain from below. His touching (crashing) down was complimented by a nice 'thud' and a momentarily a short groan too. Ness stepped up to look down into his query's face, all the while maintaining a smirk as he quietly mouthed his finishing blow. _"PK…"_

"…Mace!"

That wasn't right.

"Ugh!" A bright orange slash of light arched up and Ness cried in pain.

That definitely wasn't right.

First second he was standing in triumph, the next he was lying face-down in the dirt; fate had a cruel sense of irony, did it not? With effort, the hardly capped boy turned his face look at a spiky, glowing orb of light pointed in his direction. From behind this came a statement so bitterly true it caused him to cringe: "You lost."

Again.

…

Despite it being a completely unneeded and probably dangerous observation, Ness wondered who it was that was going to fix the wall. After all, he had been thrown into it countless times. Who DID fix the broken stuff in Onett anyway?

_**BANG!**_

Snapping out of the world of broken wall inquires to the real world of hit-them-before-they-hit-you, Ness agilely flipped sideways over a kick as well as its ringer enhanced follow-up. Forming words while still airborne, he sent a frenzied PK Sparkler toward his opponent's midsection, and then landed delicately. The said opponent had similar ideas, and the projectiles shot simultaneously collided in midair and as a result died down smaller and smaller and then into nothingness.

And out of that nothingness an orange whip came, speeding so fast that it easily caught its prey firmly by the ankle. And just like that, Ness's advantage in agility slipped away. The holder of the whip yanked it and what it held bound towards him. Ness gritted his teeth and braced his legs. The other pulled harder. The capper braced harder. Even though they were getting nowhere (literally) with this, the two continued to exert all their strength into opposite directions. It became more of a test of stubbornness than of strength, which really is absurd considering how useless stubbornness is.

Ness, in an act that lost him the test (as well as a bit of pride), jumped with the pull of the whip into his enemy's awaiting arms. This was a simple trick, however, and an expected one. The whip was whipped around so that the human missile missed his human target, and then pulled back toward said target at an angle where direct attack was impossible. Desperately trying to avoid as much hurt as possible, Ness released ringers from his hands and feet (shoes). Still this couldn't protect him from the opposing PK Punch that connected with terrible force. Sprawling through the air, the capper crashed painfully into the wall.

Again.

…

"Check!" said Matt.

"Check!"

Two fighters, ten feet away, four seconds still. Then in question of the necessity of his tense fighting stance, Ness stood up and crossed his arms. This was obviously unexpected, and just what he wanted. Matt gave him a questioning stare, but did not even relax his fighting stance fractionally. The capper gave him a stare that asked, _"Well?"_ The Dominter gave him a stare that answered _"What?"_ They both simultaneously gave stares that said, _"Ah, whatever!"_ Despite what their looks claimed, the only thing that intensified was the younger one's stance. The standoff continued for an age-long fifteen seconds, and then Ness spun around and sprayed ringers on Matt, who was just a tad late on his dodge. He flipped up after sliding a meter, and upon landing on all fours he created a large cloud of dirty dust; Ness knew not how.

Impulsively, yet foolishly, the young one rushed into the brown mist, fingertips blazing. When he discovered no one, he slowly turned around, warily eyeing the foggy walls and sending out PK fires into them. Suddenly he felt a presence behind him, and a hand rushing to his back. Whirling around, he managed to block Matt's right hand, but did not even see is left hand come up and seize his throat. Palm meeting something hard, face meeting something harder, the capper found himself on the ground, his neck still seized, and opposing force raining down on him. Struggling to remain silent against the agonized cries trying to pry their way out of his mouth, he frantically lashed out with all his appendages in every direction. His eyes were closed by pain, but his feet glanced someone several times. That told him approximately where Matt was, and he put all his strength into a donkey kick aimed in that direction. One of his feet met air; one met something's side and knocked it over.

Cracking his eyes open slightly, Ness grabbed hold of the arm that still obstinately clung to his neck. Using his newly acquired anchor, he swung himself up and down into his opponent. The heat of fire passed close by his cheek and burned it slightly, but that was a small price to pay for the blow his elbow landed to Matt's own throat. A kick sent him back up in retaliation, and an instant later the match was on its feet again.

Apparently, the older Dominter didn't like that, because several Landslides rose up very near to Ness. As light as a mutant feather, the capper skipped from the top of one of them to another, and rolled fashionably into fighting position once more. Grinning, he felt on fire. And maybe that was an omen or something; the other clapped twice and then slapped the ground on either side of him whilst shouting, "PK Dragon!" Instantly, there were smoking fields of fire to the left and right of both fighters. Now, from his experience, Ness knew that briefly after a move of that magnitude, one would be a bit out-of-breath. What he needed to do was take advantage of that.

Charging in, the capper activated 'PK Needle' as he closed the gap between him and his target. But an unfaithful target was Matt, and a cunning one. He leaned to the side, grabbed hold of the glowing needle, and raised it and Ness over the fire and into the ground beyond it.

SMACK!

Fervently pushing himself up, the younger Onettson prepared to-

_KAZZZACK!_

Groaning pitifully, he raised his hand for a PK Landwall-

**KRACK!** A ringer enhanced back-swing kick knocked him back down.

The finishing blow: "**PK**-

"ENOUGH!"

Aaron had intervened.

"Dude, just because he annoys you doesn't mean you have the right to kill him." Matt grumpily backed away from the prostrate Ness and crossed his arms. Link jumped down into the sandy ring and stood over the cappless capper. He could tell the newbie didn't want to open his eyes, and sympathized with him some.

Kneeling down, he slapped the boy's face lightly, "Get up." The slapping worked to get him up, but Ness clearly wasn't happy about pushing himself off of the ground. He glared up at Aaron from one eye as he limped to the stairway out of the mini-arena.

He slowly made his way up to the teacher and asked, "What do you want?"

Aaron looked him over; the new kid would definitely need a break from training for a while. Then he looked him in the eye. "Your first real match is in a week kid. Hope you're ready."

**Wow. I'm done. Ain't it great? It's great, I know.**

**Well, I hope you can forgive me this great delay. I do have a few excuses though. Schoolwork has gotten harder, and I've become more attached to playing videogames (specifically, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword Hero Mode). I also went to two AWSOME concerts: The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses concert, and the 116 Clique Come Alive tour. Both were absolutely AMAZING! But anyway, I digress. ON TO THE REPLIES!**

**TheMysticalQ: I sure hope I don't lose interest in this story; I really want to see the conclusion of Onettsons written. But man, you almost cried? And I thought that scene wasn't all that good! Am I good at writing sad stuff? 'Cause that's an essential skill for any writer. Suggestions for improvement welcome! And I hope you were cheering for Ness in this chapter as well.**

**Roseal: Can you forgive me again!? PLEEEAASE? I sure hope this sort of delay does not become a regular thing for this story. What did you think of the chapter? I'd love to hear from you about it!**

**PenFullofChaos819: Hey, hope everything works out for you with your stories and profiles. Just know that we all really love your work, and you needn't be ashamed of it. Why, I actually used your writing as a guide for certain elements of my story. I literally go, "How does PoC do this stuff?" and I try to learn from your writing. Anyways, what did you think? Was it worth the wait? How did I do on the characters in this chapter?**

**PK Auralight Omega: What did you think? I hope there was nothing controversial in this chapter.**

**oceanlover4evr: How was the chapter? Is the story moving too fast? Sorry for the two-month delay.**

**Innocence: Hope this one was good. What did you think?**

**Undearly Departed: Hope to read you next time!**

**CarlineN: Hope to read you next time!**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	10. The Fight

**Hello Again, AWIRT! Chapter 10 is here! …That's all I have to say right now.**

**SECOND Disclaimer: Cut Productions does not own Earthbound. If we did, this would look a lot more professional.**

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 10: The Fight

His hair couldn't move. It was plastered down. There was no way it could ever be subject to any style again. But he didn't care. In truth, he actually didn't know. Just as he didn't know many things, he didn't know that his hair was under a gray, relentless covering. Creeping tentacles from the stone cap sneaked down the rest of his face and stretched his pale skin. But he didn't care; didn't know.

After all, there was no time to know. There was only time for two things: work and fear. Unending work; limitless fear. But even though these two things were all he knew, his comprehension of them was slipping. After all, there was no time to know. Only to work and fear. These two things were no longer so much as certain aspects and times of his life, but were becoming his entire reality. The barred cell, the ghastly guards, the frightful screams, the agonizing labor: it was all blending together into an eternal shade of dreadful gray that was his life. He didn't know. He just didn't know.

Lucas didn't know that a tear slipped down to his chin and fell to the ground.

…

With the Arena looming over him, Ness did one last self-check. Excited? Check. A bit nervous? Check. Tons of training? Check. Shoes tied, hat cocked, hair brushed? Check, check, and nope. Ready? The boy closed his eyes and focused himself. Check.

Walking?

Check. Nine seconds of pushing through the crowd later, Ness was in the Arena on the day of his first match. Looking across the dark aisles, he spotted the sorta-familiar front row of seats that his team frequented. Hurrying there a bit too anxiously (he stepped on someone's foot), he looked around for his teammates. They weren't there. Nor was anyone else, as fear of the Dominter had recently turned the row into VIP seating.

"_Great,_" the capper thought, "_I might just miss it…_" This was a scary thought for anyone who had spent their past two or so months preparing for a single event. But then a hopeful thought of reason entered: "_Wait, they've got to be somewhere!_" Somewhere meant the Arena 50% of the time in Onett, so this was a pretty relieving realization. Now to find them. Looking around him, Ness peered into the shadows to see if they held any clue. None were presented. He took a few steps forward, getting rather close to the chains which encircled the fighting ring itself. On either side of him he could see other spectators, but none of them were recognizable. His nervousness rising again, the boy scratched the back of his head, wondering what he should do.

What would happen if he couldn't fight today? Would that be bad? And if so, then how bad? Such questions floated, or rather _flew_, into his head. He exhaled heavily; panicking would not help him, but he didn't know what else to do. Once more he looked around. Once more, nothing.

Then a hand roughly seized his shoulder, dragged him backward, and spun him around. Ness then found himself staring into Matt's face. _"Where have you been!?"_ the Dominter growled. The capper starred back at him, not answering, wondering who should actually be asking that question. Apparently, Matt didn't care whether he got a reply or not, as he turned on his heel and dragged Ness to who-knows-where. The bigger of the two actually knew where that was, so they got there rather quickly. The entire Dominter team was waiting for them, all relaxing in front of the barrier.

Ness, who was now freed of Matt's grip, looked at them almost angrily. "Why weren't you guys at the seats?!"

A familiar voice answered, "It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we go to the seats to watch matches, and here is where we go to fight them." It was guy with the pants.

"You're right. It doesn't. You probably just figured this out yesterday, huh?" the new guy retorted. Pants glared. Pretending to ignore him, the capper walked to the chains that divided the audience between the fighting inside the ring.

As he did so, Aaron leaned in and whispered, _"You're next after this match. And thanks for making us wait so long!"_ Ness nodded sullenly, and quickly reflected over his move set. He ran over all the ranged and melee attacks he knew and how to do them about three times, then walked over to the barrier to watch the current match.

Link was there too as an enthusiastic commentator. "Ohhh, that's GOTTA hurt!" he said as one of the combatants was electrocuted. Surprising Ness, he actually sounded sincerely sorry for the lad, if only a little bit. "Bum-ba-bum-bum, aaaannnd he's down!" And he was. After all, it's hard to be up with a full size Onettson on top of you. It's even harder if the full size Onettson happens to be punching you in the face.

"That guy's not gonna be fightin' for a while," Link stated solemnly.

"Yeah, I wouldn't think so," Ness murmured.

Link took the capper seriously. "Yeah, ya see, the sheer amount of damage this guy is gettin' is going to hurt him, but not really that much. But it LOOKS like he's getting beat to a pulp, and so everyone believes that's what's happening. It's gonna go to his head that he is getting beat real bad by an inferior fighter, and he's not gonna show up in a match for weeks."

Ness looked at him funny, facially asking if all that was really necessary. But what the Dominter had said was actually something profound, whether Ness picked up on it or not: the real damage in the fight was being done to the mind, not the body, which made it all the more harmful.

The finishing blow came: **Crack**! The capped boy's brown eyes darted up. "Match is over kid," came Aaron's voice, "You're up."

Ness breathed in, and with it all his anxiety and nervousness. He then breathed out, and all his anxiety and nervousness went with it. He stepped through the opened barrier. "It's show time."

…

His opponent was big, not enormous, but big, and of average height. He was from the Juntar Team, and was supposed to have a good amount of experience under his belt… or shoes. He had no belt. The only visual clue to indicate which part of Onett he belonged to was a weathered but seemingly permanent blue stripe around his wrist, the color of his team. This was better than Ness, whose appearance had no resemblance to his team at all, but then again, the Dominter didn't have a signature look.

He could tell his opponent was looking him over as well, and by now Ness was confident that he was a little afraid by what he saw. He hoped so, as he had trained hard for this.

Suddenly, the roar of the crowd died down to a purr, and the two dropped into a fighting stance. Locking eyes, they both waited for the other to say the word that would start the match. The waited one second too much, and the purr started to roar again. The Juntar yelled, "Check!"

Ness responded: "Check!" And the match was on. Both circled around the other in unison, and therefore no distance was proportionally gained. Several strategies flew through the capper's mind, and he selected on a fake dash forward. This almost made its target stumble, but instead he stopped at a flinch. After the flinch, he promptly rushed a kick to the Dominter's head. Ness saw the attack before his foot even left the ground, and jumped back fractionally. When the Juntar landed, he was in dangerous proximity to his opponent. His opponent promptly PK Blasted him back. In an impressive feat of footwork and shear ankle strength, he still managed to keep on his feet. Ness felt his competiveness rise as he strongly disliked how weak his attack now looked.

_No matter._ The Dominter rushed forward, trying to invoke a reaction.

_Correct him._ The Juntar jumped up, spun around and with his foot unleashed PK Shock.

_Good job._ The Dominter jumped and rolled to the left, satisfied that he had gotten a reaction.

_Stop that._ The Juntar moved toward and out from his rival and made several splashes of ringers to confuse him.

_Get out._ The Dominter dashed to his left, but still received some damage from ringers.

_He's open._ The Juntar took advantage of the moment and shouted the first thing that came to mind.

_Brace yourself._ The Dominter took his first hit and fell pitifully to the ground.

_Finish it._ The Juntar zoomed in a tad clumsily and tried to lay a hand on his opponents face, neck or chest.

_Fight it._ The Dominter grabbed the assailing hands by their wrists just as PK Fire was emitted from one of them. Acting on a whim, he used his strength and a slight Landwall to push himself up. He landed clumsily, almost falling down, but willed himself to keep his feet. The blue bearer had similar trouble, but not quite as much as the capper.

The two paused and caught their breath for a second, and then continued to do so whilst slowly circling each other. After 15 seconds of this, the Juntar cried, "PK Charge!" out of boredom. Ness dodged out of boredom and returned the favor with 'PK Bolt'. This was dodged in the same way and the same went for the Juntar's PK Snatch. Rinse. Repeat. This was how most matches were brought to a standstill in Onett, and although the audience didn't particularly like it, they were used to it by now.

Well, they were used to it most of the time. More like…95% of the time. But NOT when the fight involved a Dominter. The mere word Dominter made every citizen of the town feel one type of excitement or another. So when a match with a new and semi-hyped-up member of the infamous team boiled down to a simple shoot-out, the onlookers were naturally unimpressed. Whispers swarmed like locusts through the crowd and all carried the same general statement: _"I think this guy's a rip-off!"_ The message was passed on, until Dominter had everyone excited once again; because if this was all their new guy had, the top dog was slipping. This prospect grew tenser in the air and in the minds of the Arena, until every member of the audience was on their feet and cheering/chanting their own version of one thought.

This profoundly confused the two fighters down in the ring below, who had no idea how to interpret this extreme turn of events and were now barely even fighting at all. They couldn't understand the gibberish that the mixed mass of varying cries produced, but the Dominter team did. They knew what it meant, and they didn't like it. Aaron turned to their representative in the ring. "Come on…Do Something!"

Ness couldn't hear him, but a small voice of reason told to stop trying to discern what the crowd was shouting and to focus on the task at hand. The boy looked over and saw his enemy still, but undeniably not much longer, looking towards the fans. The Dominter took his chance and ran as fast as he could forward and shouted with all his might, "PK SLIIICCE!"

In the new-fallen hush the Juntar slammed into the floor and rolled and tumbled until he finally halted. But this wasn't over. "PK Snag!" Ness's chain found its target and dragged it back fiercely. The capper set his aim and – "PK Fire!"

Two words. Match. Over.

…

Ness stepped out of the fighting ring feeling proud, but strangely unsatisfied. He felt even more unsatisfied when he was greeted with a very unsatisfied audience. This audience was none other than his own team, who looked just about as glad to see him as a swarm of mosquitoes. He wondered what he had done wrong.

"What was THAT!?" Aaron asked angrily.

Ness gave him a sideways glance. He was feeling a bit underwhelmed with his first bought in the Arena, but that didn't mean he could tolerate insults about it. "My victory. Did'ja miss that?"

"Oh, no. We didn't miss that," came Link. "We also didn't miss what happened in the crowd either."

"Yeah, and just for the record, did'ja miss THAT!?" Aaron snapped.

"Standing. Cheering. Screaming incoherent nonsense. Yeah, I got all of it," the capper replied confidently.

"Yeeeeeep, he missed it, alright," Pants said. There was a general assent to this, and the new member began doubting his immunity to fault. Had he done something wrong after all?

"You took the match to a standstill, which has not happened in Dominter history for AS LONG AS I HAVE BEEN AROUND!" shouted Matt.

"Yeah, and he's 233 years old!" Aaron backed him up. "And now that you've sunk us that low, the rest of the town can't help but add a little more water!" Everyone stared at him in silent confusion. "What?! You don't get it?"

"We were supposed to?" At this Aaron became quiet. There were a few light giggles which attracted his grilling glare. The perpetrators were hardly grilled and returned slight mocking grins. Ness waited for his teacher to calm down and then resumed his confusion.

"What standstill did I bring the match to?" he asked a bit more civilly. Not for the first time, the only response he got was a look which made it look like he had asked the dumbest question ever.

"*cough* *cough* _shooting everything_ *cough* _and doing nothing _*cough*!" Pants replied. 'Shooting everything and doing nothing' was the common Onettson term for the exact thing Ness had done which had caused such an uproar.

It then dawned on the capper just what they were accusing him of (even though he had really known what they were criticizing from the start, although he had been too stubborn to admit it to himself). He felt a little shame, but only an inconsequential little as he was still mad. "Yup, dude. You fail," Link said a tad sympathetically; Ness refused to look at him.

The entire team was quiet for a while. It began to get awkward, feet shuffled, until finally the capper burst out, "Well, I WON, right!?" and stormed off.

"You better do better next time!" Matt shouted after him.

"And I hope you're going off to train!" Aaron put in. Once he was far enough off, Ness dipped his head into his hands and sighed deeply.

"_Lucas would understand…Heh! He would probably understand a little too much! …if only he were here._" Wait a second! Lucas was in Onett, right? The black-haired boy looked up and spied an exit from the Arena. Without even thinking about what he was doing or what he was going to do, Ness raced out the exit to find his friend.

…

The shaking hand moved with unseeable speed, caught the fire warrior's neck, and the other hand, which had been secretly charging a Singe Poke, slammed itself into the fire warrior's face.

Green burning began.

Agony indescribable pulsed steadily through him. In him before was fire, warm, restless, and peaceful. Now it was drowned out by fire, cold, methodical, and full of wrath. This was more than burning, this was more than pain…this was agony. That was the only word he could think of. Agony filled his mind as it filled his body.

A minute before he had been standing tall, but now he was on his knees. A minute before he had been above all, and now another was standing over him. And a hand in his face…a hand in his face…burning his face…

By all the force not in him he took the hand off. But the damage was done. The green master stepped back to allow all those watching to behold what their Great Flaming Leader had become. And the ones who did see never looked back.

This leader looked up and saw a tidy little house, standing out against all the other houses of the town. It was colored in a bright yellow shade of paint, and its roof was a strong red. The small yard around it was well-kept and even. Healthy plants grew in pots on its doorstep and its windows. And in these windows lurked a green-eyed ghost; a horrible, fallen mutant. And it made the leader scream.

**Whew! I shouldn't take this long on updates, but I do, nevertheless. I'm just in a stage of life where writing and getting to writing is hard, so you'll just have to bear with me for a while. I am gaining speed, albeit slowly, and I GOT OUT OF SCHOOL TODAY :DDD. PRIVATE SCHOOL SCHEDUALS FOR THE WIN! Hopefully, that will mean the next chapter will come quicker than this one, but Christmas time is still busy. Oh, right. MERRY EARLY CHRISTMAS or HAPPY 12/12/12!**

**I'm probably going to apologize to you guys every update for a while, aren't I? Well, in any case, I am still sorry about my unacceptable laziness, and I hope you will forgive me…and stick with me.**

**On to the replies!**

**Roseal: Thank you for no grudges. Thank you. So you like my action scenes? There are going to be a lot of those in this story, so that's truly great. The fighting scene in this chapter is done in the same style so I hope it delivers. Ya know, your comment about writing-quickness really pushed me during this period, so to you I am very grateful.**

**Innocence: I'm glad you liked chapter 9, and I hope you liked this one too as well as its fight. Oh, by the way, what's your new profile picture from? Or is it original? Thanks for the review!**

**animefan4eva5: Yeah, I'm trying to put as much Lucas into the future story as possible. So! Ness finally remembers Lucas again! What did you think? And I'll do my best to keep up the work.**

**TheMysticalQ: The fights aren't exactly random, they are more orderly and organized than that (most of the time). And for the fun of it? ...Well, yeah. It's like the Roman Coliseum. But is it pointless, or isn't it? MWAHAHAHAHA! …Gosh Murphy! I keep macking – Argh I mean making – mistakes like that! Thank you for letting me know, though, I do try to make my document error-free.**

**PenfullofChaos819 (for his review on chapter 8): No need to worry, I enjoyed your review! I see your knowledge of Earthbound has grown. Interesting stuff, no? It is ironic when you think about the situations Ness and Lucas are in, considering the blonde is the most, shall we say, 'tender' of the two and he gets the tougher situation. Wrong Nintendo© mascot there! You're right, they don't really know what quality entertainment is, but you've got to admit that cake-evisceration is a major saving grace. Yes, the process of the prison is really quite horrible, but Lucas has more purpose than that. Back to Ness, I couldn't stop chuckling at your outcry against Aaron. The punching bag to a bit of effort to design and describe on my part, but I'm satisfied with the results. And now the boy is wandering half-awake through the streets, meets a bunch of baddies, and does a prom run! He might call Paula, but radio towers haven't yet made their way into Onett yet. I do feel a bit dissatisfied with the end of this scene, but I like the very end. I'm very glad you like the chapter and I hope you enjoy the rest.**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	11. In Need of Legend

**Hey, AWIRT. It's been awhile, hasn't it? It's also been about a year since I first published this, and I've made it to the eleventh chapter. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but anyways, HAPPY 2013! Oh, and heads up, this chapter is going to be a bit different.**

**So, without further ado…**

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 11: In Need of Legend

Up, up, up the side of mountain they went. They weren't exactly sure where they were going; all they really knew it was up. So that was where they were focusing on going: up, by whatever path they could find and take. Path such as these, unfortunately, were none too common. So going up was a time-consuming drag. But if what they had witnessed were signs that worse things were to come, then all of the work required to scale the mountain was worth it. No, more than worth it, though some might disagree.

Their trek they had started hours ago, and if any of them could do math they would know they were ¾ of the way to the top of the mountain. Despite being mostly done, they were starting to slow down, and something other than the fatigue of climbing was causing it. Something that, in all of their separate careers, they were taught never to admit to.

_Fear_.

Fear meant a lack, a lack meant inadequacy, inadequacy meant weakness, weakness meant inability, and inability meant uselessness. Useless, good-for-nothing, lowdown, unneeded, unwanted, might-as-well-be-dead. _Fear._ Fear was the root of it all, but it could also be mistaken for timidity. But the line between these two things had long been blurred and forgotten for them and their people.

And just who were their people? Well, you might have already have figured this out, but their people were the Onettsons. And just who were they, climbing up the mountain? Glad you might've asked. They were the leaders of the Thirteen Teams of Onett, and therefore the Boys' Town itself. They had risen to the top of the aggressive arena food chain by being smarter and tougher than the rest. But most of all, they showed no fear. Yet now every one of them was perilously close to revealing their concealed dread.

Normally, not one the group could even look at another without breaking out into argument, if not worse. But they were all united (temporarily) because they and their teams shared a common threat, which was none other than the team that wasn't among them: Dominter. The Dominter had always been a problem, but never like what they had become recently. For ages they had been an undefeatable monster lurking in the Arena, thoroughly beating everyone who dared challenge it. But weeks ago the monster had burst forth from the confines of the fighting ring wreaking havoc on the rest of the city without provocation. And who to influence the monster to such action then its newest member, who apparently had also become its leader. This had not happened in Dominter history since the team was assembled countless decades back, due to the snobbish attitude of every member. Indeed, if a true leader had now come to the team, then something big was bound to happen soon.

Commotion spread through the group as an actual pathway up the mountain had been found. This was a relief, as they bore countless blisters from climbing, hanging, and leaping from rock-outcrop to rock-outcrop. They clambered their own way to the path, not waiting for anyone else. In truth, they all would've rather come up to their destination separately, and not in the company of their lifetime rivals. And what company it was, as no one had spoken more than one word to anyone since their upwards trek began.

This trend, however, was about to be broken. There was a question that was lingering in everyone's mind, but no one asked for fear of a social blunder. But social problems didn't stop some people. "WHERE exactly are we going!?" the speaker said putting as much emphasis on the 'where' as he could to make the others sound like the idiots, not him.

Everyone there was all too eager to turn a judgmental glare on him, even if they were wondering the same question themselves. The captain of the Tigret Team asked, "And just what team do you lead, might I ask?"

"You may ask," the asker retorted with a mock bow. "I am the leader of the Juntar Team. I guess you can't see well, 'cause the blue should'a tipped you off!"

"Doesn't matter, 'cause my guy beat both your guys without a break the other day! Beat THAT!" This extremely off topic comment came from the KnKights Team (pronounced 'night') leader. Of course, they could have been talking about Swiss cheese before this was said, because it wouldn't have changed the outcome. Instantly cries echoing the same statement, 'I and my team are better than you and your team', filled the mountain air.

Ten mouths raged at all others, while only three stood on the sidelines, engaging in the verbal (and not-so-verbal) confrontation with just their thoughts. One of these three turned his thoughts away from the conflict and back to their actual mission. He looked upward, and with his PK-heightened vision espied a thick, almost reflective haze. "There's the Rim."

"Yeah, so let's get these idiots to keep quiet and get up there." An answer had not been expected, so the looker was a tad startled. He was also startled by how much he had to look up to make eye-contact with the person who answered him. This person was none other than the Giant, the rarely-seen and enigmatic leader of the Tricon Team. While most Onettsons' bodies stopped growing around age 12, the Giant's had stopped growing at 17. When he had first come to Onett, the Dominter had tried fiercely to recruit him, but he had refused. He was a legend in the Boys' Town, with some even going as far to say he had once defeated a Dominter.

The Giant walked over to the ongoing fray, but did not enter. Normally when he walked up to a group, he was immediately the center of attention, but now he would have to apply a different attention-getting tactic: shouting really, really loud.

"_**LISTEN UP!**_"

All Onettsons could use what they called Super-Shout. But by having five more years' worth of lung capacity, the Giant's shout was without equal. The bickering stopped, and seven out of ten gave the Tricon Leader their eyes. The other three went back to their heated debate (about who among them was the oldest nonetheless); until they realized that everyone was staring at them, waiting for to hush up. They reluctantly did. "Hey, we don't have to-" one of them started, but stopped when he noticed the 6 footer gesturing up the mountain. They then remembered the actual reason for them being on this rock path in the first place.

The Giant started to sprint up ahead, which caused his on-edge rivals to pick up the pace as well. Soon they were all racing to their destination, but then someone started to wonder…

"WHERE are we going again!?"

…

No high-altitude, low-oxygen rock formation had ever looked sweeter than the top of the Mountain to the Onett leaders. All of them had the mind to drop right then and there, but none did as all feared what that might reflect on them.

But then something else entered everyone's mind; that same irritating question that had been asked twice on the way up. Where to from here? They had come seeking a legend to help them, a legend said to live at the top of the Mountain. But where on the top of the mountain? And if they found him, then what? Would he listen to them? Or would he be more of a beast than a boy? The dreaded touch of fear found its way back into their hearts, causing them to look around in worry.

Then they became composed. They had a mission to do, and they were going to do it. Or at the very least try as hard as they could. "Let's get going!" And soon the Onettsons were clambering and running along the volcano-like opening…in different directions. Six of the thirteen were making their way around one way, while the other seven ran the other way.

"HEY!" both sides shouted at the other.

"WE'RE GOING **THIS** WAY!" the seven shouted.

"'THINK YOU'RE MISTAKEN IDIOTS!" the six shot back. "WE'RE GOING _THIS_ WAY!"

"PROVE IT!" And so they did. The six continued running, but this time with extra vigor. The other side could not be outmatched, so they immediately started running their direction as well. And soon enough both sides were out of sight of each other, pushed forward not by a desire to complete their task, but to defeat the others supposed to complete it with them.

…

"_Am I useless? Is there anything I have accomplished in my 'Great Mission'?_"

_You are not useless. Yet it seems you are in pursuit of being so._

"_I am not pursuing it! *powerful shudder goes through body* It-I-there is nothing to do. At the moment._"

_There is always a task at hand. But it must be sought out._

"_How often have I sought such a thing out!? And how often have I come away, my efforts fruitless?_"

_Often._

"_Then why must I go seek it out?_"

_There is always a task at hand._

"_You are wrong. Not always. There is naught to do now._"

*shudder* _you have lain and reaped your own deceit…_*shudder*

"_Why is it impossible that I have done all that I can?_"

_Because you have accepted me._

"_THEN WHY CAN I NOT BE RID OF YOU!?_"

No response. He already knew the answer anyway.

"_What must I do?_" But instead, he answered his own question. "_Hunt them. Go after them. They are all coming from somewhere; they must have a base. Find it and destroy it. That is what I must do."_

But then another urgent thought presented itself. "_And Onett…?_"

He could not leave the Boys' Town unprotected. But to truly protect it he must track them down. He could not do both. He had to do one. Stay or leave. He had to choose.

…

The group of seven was running at a moderate pace, keeping their eyes peeled for anything that might be an indicator for where to find the legend they sought. They felt silly, searching for something that had dropped into myth for years, not to mention putting so much dependence on it. But if any they wished to take down the Dominter, they would need help of legendary magnitude.

"I can't believe we're doing this," came the cynical voice of the Juntar leader. If it was attention he wanted, he soon was rich with it. He continued, "Here we are, a bunch of Onett leaders running on the top of the Mountain trying to find some sort of monster to help us deal with one Dumbinter!"

"It's not a monster!" objected the Knknights commander, "It's just – just – some dude with a different power!"

"That power-" injected the Giant-

"I know what it is!" Knknights interrupted.

"-is Singe," the Tricon leader finished. "And Singe is more than just 'some power'. If an Onettson uses Singe-based powers enough, they gain the ability to use real Singe powers, but can no longer use PK Powers."

"And then they become different," said the Zask team leader thoughtfully (and superiorly), "they start drifting away from other Onettsons, stop going to the Arena, and only hang out with other Singe-people."

"Yeah, except all the Singe Masters are dead," the Giant took up the lesson again. "But that's where the legend comes in."

"Duh, duh, duh! Just 'cause some weirdo comes and burns 'The Singe Master' on the Arena wall doesn't mean that there are still some alive!" Juntar disagreed.

Zask exploited, "It's not like the Singe-guys are a race or anything. Someone just needs to learn Singe and voila! A new Singe-guy!"

One of them had heard enough. "Stop gabbing and look around for the person, or thing, or whatever! After all, don't they like to be-!" The speaker was suddenly interrupted when he took a misstep and tripped. That forbidden feeling of fear filled fast (alliteration!) his heart, as he was dangerously close to the edge. But there was no long fall that ended in doom for him, just a short fall that ended flat on his face…and with people laughing at him.

"Where'd you learn to walk?" Taunted as such, he quickly and clumsily came to his feet. Choosing, and wisely so, to remain silent and only communicate with his eyes, the tripped-up turned to what had caused his stumble. It was, in fact, a very thin, odd-looking rock that stuck a few feet into the air. It was very peculiar

"What is this…!" the speaker was startled when he felt warmed metal rather than course stone upon touching the thing.

"What's wrong with you? You retarded or something?" Zask asked. No answer. "Yup. He's retarded or something."

The speaker, still keeping quiet, took a step back and filled his lungs with air. Aided by absolutely nothing but super powers, the boy blew out a powerful gust onto the object that tripped him.

"What's wrong you – Oh…" came from somewhere in the audience. The object, now free of its earthen dust coating, was now revealed to be, in fact, the top of what looked to be a flag pole protruding straight out of the rock.

The Giant stepped forward. No one hindered him, of course. He asked, "What on Earth is a flag pole doing here!? And for that matter, where's its flag?" That question was unnecessary, however, for at that moment he saw a black thread tied just under the pole's head. A strand of it winded down to the mountain floor where it entered a thin crevice. Seizing the thread between his large thumb and index finger, the Giant pulled out…wait for it…A FLAG. Instantly recognizing its relationship with the pole, the Onettson kneeled down and put it back into the position it once kept, while the original tripper pulled out the other two corners to see the image the flag held.

Upon seeing the image, the entire conglomeration of Onett leaders froze. What they saw before them said a lot about many of their assumptions. _"No way…"_ the Tricon leader mouthed.

The Juntar leader leaned forward to the Giant and whispered, "What was that you were saying about the Singe Masters? Ya know, with being dead and all?"

…

The group of six…well, it used to be a group of six. Now it was a group of two, one, one, one, and 1.5 (one of the groups of one was sort of in and out of that group). The group of two, despite being acclaimed bitter rivals, had actually found that they had a lot in common; at the moment they were having a blast talking about the things they both shared a dislike of and to what extent they disliked it. Most of the others were in some form of brooding or another as they walked along, though the one and 1.5 were talking off-and-on about what they were looking for, how they would go about finding it, and what they would do when they found it, whatever it was.

A very merry group this would seem to any Onettson underling of theirs back down at home. It proved itself very merry by the fact that they weren't at each other's throats and some were actually getting along. This would have been simply riveting to that hypothetical Onettson underling. Very riveting, very merry, indeed.

It was at that moment (no, not THAT moment, the other one) that the one and 1.5 noticed that fireworks were bursting off in the distance. Neither of them had ever seen fireworks in their life, so they came to the next logical conclusion: the colorful explosions off up in the air were from PK powers. That actually made more sense given the overall lack of fireworks on the Nowhere Islands. "_That's probably the rest of the guys…_" the 1.5 grumbled, angered that this probably meant they had found the legend before them. "_At least they're all still wimps. The way their people fight for them! Why, I'd even go as FAR as to-_"

He was kicked out of his self-glorifying train of thought when the one called, "HEY! Speed it up; we gotta get over there!" This got the attention of the remaining four who were previously unaware of the explosive signals.

"We don't need to knock ourselves out getting there! It's not like we have to be there right now!" retorted 1.5, not wanting to give their rivals more reason to brag over them by rushing to the beck and call.

"Tell that to your broken-down base after the Dumbinter are through with it." And with that, the one left him. The rest of the group paused, studied the fading explosions, studied the others, studied themselves, studied the one already leaving them, and then threw caution to the mountain wind and hurried after him.

The five never caught up to him, most likely because they lacked his enthusiasm, but they made it over quickly thanks to their being Onettsons. When they arrived, they were received with a heart-warming greeting: "'Bout time you dopes got here. We've been waiting here for like ten minutes, which is ten minutes more than we should've been."

"WOW! TEN MINUTES!? That means you can tell time! Congratulations!" responded the 1.5, eager to lift the fault off himself (and by extension, the other five that came with him).

The Giant knew this comment would start another bickering uproar, which he had had enough of. Stepping between to two warlords in one stride, he held his hands out in front of each of them. "This is all fine and dandy," he said in mock sweetness, "but get to the whole reason we came here and LOOK AT THE FLAG."

1.5 didn't care. "THE FLAG!? WHAT DO I CARE ABOUT A STUPID FLAG!? I THOUGHT WE WERE LOOKING FOR SOME CRAZY MAGICAL WARRIOR, NOT A CRAZY PIECE OF CLOTH!" He was absolutely enraged that the Giant had dared to come between him and his fight, even if he didn't plan on fighting it. And the tone of his voice when he spoke to him! Well, it was about time brought this hulking freak down to size! "Listen here, I don't care what's on the flag! I will…will…I…I…oh…"

The giant had stepped over and lifted the flag up so that 1.5 could see. What he saw quieted him down.

The flag was mostly jet black, with a green rectangle about an inch in covering the perimeter of the flag. The rectangle was made up of what looked to be green strands of light, then fire, then smoke. Inside the rectangle was a dark outline in dark green of one side of an Onettson's face, a face with unnatural ghostly eyes. The face held a hand out towards the on looking audience, almost as if it were trying to break the two dimensional bonds of the flag and reach out into the world. In its grasp was a whitish outline of what closely resembled the cityscape around the Arena, with the Arena itself in the center. The city was held within a green flame that rose upwards, lazy yet foreboding. And at the top of the fiery flickers was a single, smiling 'S', snake-like in the way it curved.

The Giant spoke up, "That 'S' can only mean one thing: Singe." And when he said that, _fear_ crept back into their hearts.

"**It is finished." (Jesus Christ, circa A.D. 30)**

**And finished it is. You might be tired of me saying this, (and POC I now understand why you do this ;)) but I am quite sorry for HOW LOOOOONNGGG this took me. Yes, I do have excuses: Christmas was hectic, school work picked up, and events overall became more frequent and time-consuming. However, I still could've gotten this out sooner if I had actually tried, and that is really why I'm sorry. In fact, this chapter was supposed to be twice as long, but due to how long I was taking, I decided to cut it in half. So yes, the next chapter will be a direct sequel to this.**

**Anyways, I hope you guys liked this new chapter along with its change of pace. A major plot changer is goin' to start next chapter, so get ready! I actually owe the idea for this chapter to Weedy Spyze's criticism, who noticed the story was getting repetitive and thought it was time for something new to happen. I believe by using this chapter the way I did, I have saved the story from getting long in the tooth and repetitive. However, I'd like to know if you thought it was such a success AWIRT.**

**On to the replies!**

**Weedy Spyze: I think the thing is that you were looking for a good Earthbound fanfiction, which is not what you're going to get here. This story is product of the stimulation of my imagination by what SSBB provided in the way of info on Earthbound. I am sorry that this story is probably not for you, so let's agree to disagree. However, if this new chapter had something that caught you're attention, I would like to hear about it. Thank you for the constructive criticism.**

**TheMysticalQ: Do some fights really seem like filler? I guess…but I only put in fight scenes when I believe they help the plot. But if they seem otherwise I would like to hear about it. Yes, we are finally getting to the part where Lucas's situation is going to be dealt with…well, at the beginning of it. What did'ja think of this chapter? Was it a smart move or too soon? Anyways, see you next time!**

**Roseal: It's great to see you enjoying Onettsons so much! Sorry, no fight scenes here, but giving them a break makes them more special, right? But what did you think of the verbal fights in this one, short as they may be? Glad to make your day and I hope this makes yours again!**

**PenFullofChaos819 (Chapter 9 Review): It's great to see you back again, and your humor is still cheesy and enjoyable as ever. I completely understand if you don't have enough time for this now, though. Final Fantasy VII, huh? Does Kelfka do anything like Ness's dream (never played the games, but I have hear a lot about Kelfka)? As clarification for the (intentionally) confusing scene, the first voices you see are those of Onettsons as they pass by Ness's unconscious body. The first voice in italics (as far as you know) is strictly something in Ness's dream, perhaps a more mischievous side of his subconscious. The second voice is Ness himself, who is currently talking to someone (the first voice) in a strange dream. At this point Ness is between being asleep and being awake. Moving on, it looks like my description of Ness's feelings in public and his wounds were pretty effective. And 'Link' was a fairly obvious reference to The Legend of Zelda, of which I am now a fan. His like of using melee attacks, relative youth, and relative kindness are all also references to the real Link as well. Thank you for the compliment about the fight scenes. Some of my knowledge in that area is from taking martial arts training; it's much easier to write about fighting when you've been trained in fighting. With Matt, since the reader had already met him, I wanted to base his fighting style off what was already known about him. Therefore I made it big, bad, and slightly cunning. Work hard at college and your job, and give a review whenever it's convenient for you! (Oh, and one last thing. Since you're so good with OCs, how were the ones in this chapter? I'd love to have your opinion!)**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	12. The Master's Council

**I'm'a back! With a story! And/or a chapter of a story! And progress being made in that story! So, yeah; I'm back. With a story. Let's do this.**

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 12: The Master's Council

Picture this: when you were born, you had a pretty normal life. You were a pretty normal person with a pretty normal desire to be in control. Then one day you wake up with the realization that you're not normal, and everyone else is going to find out pretty soon. You try to mask your differences in any way you can, until the point of no return is reached. You can't run anymore; you're going to be found out.

But just then something happens, something big. And you're no longer different. You're in a new place with new people, and they're all just like you. And you're just like them.

Then picture this: you want to be different again, distinguishable among the masses. You miss being counted as an exception in the constant flow of the norm, for better or for worse. So you work for that title, doing your best to be the best at everything your new life has to offer. And by chance, luck, or fate you succeed. You've found the perfect balance of new and normal: you're doing what all the others are doing, but you're doing it at the top. And that's exactly where you want to be.

Now try having all of that threatened. Someone else is going to take away your hard-earned balance, throw you back down to the bottom and for what? Fun. They think that it would be fun. The worst part of it all is that you can't do anything to stop them. And you rage, beating at life for setting you up so cruelly.

Picture this: the only people that can help you are the people you despise most, second only to those threatening your position. But the enemy of your enemy is you accomplice, so you set out in a desperate hope to find help. A help that comes from legends. Legends don't normally like to step outside their secretive and secluded boundaries, but you manage to find a piece of it. This piece of cloth is an emblem of the legend, and it leads to the legend's fortress.

…wherever that is.

"Sooooo… we have a flag. Now where's our Singe Master?" Knknights asked skeptically. The others silently assented, if reluctantly. However much proof a flag was, it wasn't really a big red arrow pointing to their savior. But it was all they had, so the least they could do would be to sit right down and give up, but the best they could do would be to make the best of it.

"Okay, think, think," the Giant replied as he sat down to do just that.

"Oh, I bet that's _really _easy for you," 1.5 grumbled sarcastically, thinking. What did their trophy signify about the whereabouts of the Singe Master? Well, certainly he had to have a base. All of them had their own base marked by their own flag, so it would only make sense if he did, too. After all, weren't the Singe Masters technically their own team? So if that was true, didn't that mean their flag would be near their base? More specifically, "RIGHT ABOVE!" 1.5 suddenly realized he had blurted his realization aloud, and kicked himself for messing up whatever image of respect he had in these other's eyes. Well, they would forget about it if he found the legend for them. "I just figured it out! We're right above the guy's base!" He was given attention. "Think about it: we all keep our flags above the roofs of our bases, so why should this guy do any different?" finished the boy.

The others quickly showed facial signs of vague assent, except for the Juntar. "Uhhh, hate to steal your thunder and all, but it's stickin' out of a ROCK. That ain't exactly a lair for legend." The signs of assent vanished.

But 1.5 was not quite done yet. "Forgot the part about the rock, huh? Well, dummies, these guys don't just throw fireworks into the air announcing where their base is, so you aren't confused. They actually like to be _secretive_. They even go to the trouble of disguising where they live so they're not easily found! In fact, some even say that they even disguise it _**like a rock**__._"

As he said the words in italics, 1.5 brought a PK Quake up and down into the crevice which had held the flag. Being a swirling transparent orb of energy specifically designed to blow things apart, the attack was being used to its fullest potential as it was detonated between the two opposing walls of stone. Instantly pushing back the walls and the people above them, the quake shook the ground appropriately as it forced the small fissure to open into a yawning abyss.

Picking themselves furiously off the ground, the Onettsons were of one mind to make the culprit for their flight pay. The culprit (1.5) quickly saw that it may've been a better idea to think his move through a little bit before blasting everyone back. It had only been a few feet, but an uncomfortable few feet nonetheless. "Mind WARNING US before you do that next time!?" the Tigret leader roared, "Or did you MEAN to send me over the edge?!" In truth, the boy had landed a safe distance from the precipice, but he wasn't about to pass up a good chance to get mad.

While this was going on, no one realized that they had all forgotten the reason 1.5 had started the quake in the first place. That is, except the Juntar leader. He had been a considerable distance away when the attack went off, so he only went sliding on his feet. As he went sliding he had witnessed what the crevice had become, and thus could not help but check it out. The first thing he noticed when he peered down into the hole: it was dark. Really dark. But he could almost make out several strange shapes in the inkiness and they didn't seem that far down. Encouraged, he reached down his hand to find open air, then his foot, then his other foot, until he was hanging by one arm to the top of the pit. He looked around at the surrounding blackness, seeing that not too far underneath the surface the crevice caved back in on itself. It would be a tight squeeze to try to fit through there, but the Juntar could feel it: something was down there, and he would be an idiot to leave it.

Meanwhile, he could hear the beginnings of a scuffle up above him, and against all odds he was not in it. "_Like it's gonna stay that way for long…_" he breathed as he pulled himself up. Once back on solid ground, he observed 1.5 going toe-to-toe with the Tigret Team leader, encouraged/discouraged by the rest of their company all around them. He decided to make his message simple and shot a PK Fire into their midst, causing them to all jump back in unison. They then turned to him, and he in turn turned to the hole. "You guys comin' or what?" Then he jumped over the edge.

It was now that the others noticed the opened crevice for the first time. "Just to let you know," the Knknights team leader stated, "I knew that thing was there the whole time." Before anything else could be said, he ran forward and joined the Juntar down in the hole. Inside, the blue leader was trying to figure out a way to bypass the narrow opening without having to thin himself in the process. One by one, the face of each other leader appeared above them. Not wanting to be left out, they all climbed into the crevice at their own pace, somehow managing to squeeze themselves in. "Hey! Watch it! You think we got a lot of room in here?" Knknights complained.

"You can leave if there's a problem…" Zask threatened as he demonstrated how much he would like to help anyone 'leave'.

"Well, you ARE full of problems," the other leader baited. "So I think it'd be best if you were the one that leaves…"

"Want me to prove it to you?" The quip was joined by a ringer-punch. However, Knknights had been expecting something far deadlier and easily countered this, grabbing Zask's upper arm and used his momentum to ram him into the wall. Yet he had not foreseen the dangers of letting his opponent's hand get so close to him.

"PK Shock!" Knknights grunted as he fell over from the assault and into another leader.

"Hey! PK Slice!" was this leader's reply. Unfortunately, the attack worked so well that it hit not only the one who fell on him but also two others. And then they let loose their own attacks, which due to the small space hit two other previously unengaged Onettsons, and the rest didn't even wait to be hit to join in the fray.

"PK Ruse!"

"PK Quake!"

"PK Spark!"

"PK Shield!"

"PK Rumble!"

"PK Mortar!"

Everyone immediately stopped. They looked at the one that had cast the mortar, the Amistar leader, who realized what he had done. Looking up to the sky, they beheld the large black and orange orb as it reached the peak of its assent, paused, then plummeted back down. Towards the earth. Towards the hole in the earth. Towards them. Juntar turned to Amistar, seething, "I hate you so much."

_**BOOM!**_

…

Was that…a voice? Another voice in his ear? He paused. Absolute quiet. It was nothing. Just one of his own voices, trying to fool him.

It happened occasionally. He would be alone, as always. Sitting in a dark room devoid of any sound, he would become still and listen. Of course, he would be unaware of his listening, as he was listening to silence. Then a thought would make itself known to him, but it would be wrapped in strange garb and he would not recognize it as his own. Swiftly, it would speak to him and be gone. And he would be left confused and bewildered, wondering where the voice came from and where it had gone.

He was the only one in his life, him and his many demons. Distorting memories of those he once knew, guessed personalities of those he knew existed but never met, and his own bitterness were but some of the more prominent members of these demons. They made it their point to harass his already damaged psyche. Luckily, they belonged to the very thing they attacked, so he could chain them down again if ever they escaped. Given their numbers, it was an often occurrence.

Such was his life. And today would be no different. Or…would it? After all, he was trying to decide whether it was in his best interests to stay in his hiding spot and watch over the Boys' Town or to leave and go after the enemy. He caught himself. Not his best interests, the city's. He had to do what was best for Onett, whether it suited his likings or not. So what was that? What would benefit the squabbling, uncouth citizens of the town he protected most?

_If you continue as you always have and linger here, is it really possible that you could do anymore good?_

The voice had returned. The one he had accepted all those years ago at the start of his mission. Of all of the demons that he kept, this was the only one which was not against him. He hated it and cherished it, for though it was his only friend, he could never see eye-to-eye with it. Which was odd, since the voice was only the part of his mind affected by the Singe.

The voice begged an answer. He considered one. Leave Onett vulnerable or protected? Leave the enemy on its own or hunt it? For years he had guarded Onett, so maybe it was time to do something different. "_I'm going to leave._"

He stood up. All of a sudden, he felt free. No more waiting, he was finally going to do it! At last, he could find the truth and come to terms with his enemy, and maybe even himself. Brushing his hair out of his face, he turned towards the door.

It was at that moment the ground shook and he heard an explosion outside.

…

'Landed' is not the right word. Neither is 'plummeted'. 'Dropped' and 'crashed' do not fit either, nor does 'smashed'. In fact, no one word could properly convey the impact of rock fragments and Onett leaders into the cold cavern floor. You could try 'humongous', you could try 'deafening', you could try 'shattering', you could even try 'indescribable'; it would not be able to capture the moment.

Despite being combat veterans, all of them, each with large lists of attacks they had sustained, none of their pain-countering techniques were enough for them to get up immediately after the collision. In fact, it was several minutes before anyone even moved. And when they felt the peace of body restored, the first thing they moved was their mouth.

"Whooo…who did that?" the leader of the Shilan groaned. The Amistar leader attempted to melt into the ground, which isn't too hard to do if you're halfway encased in it.

…

He stared at the door. He just stared. What had he just heard? Could it…could it really have been the sounds of fighting? An explosion? Was it possible… Under their mask, his eyes widened with horror at the thought.

What if the enemy had found him?

He took a step to the door. If they found him, they found Onett, and it was all over. He took another step. But he could fight back. He took another. And he could win. Two more. And he would win. He reached the door.

But then he heard another sound. A sound the enemy could not make. Yelling voices. He told himself they were his own voices, but then he realized that was impossible. His voices never yelled. In fact, they rarely said anything above a whisper. The only one that spoke somewhat loudly was the one voice, but it never came close to a shout. No, these belonged to someone else. But…who would be beyond his door? He exhaled slowly. Whoever it was, it was a sign that change had come.

…

"I guess you're going to say you weren't trying to kill us, huh?" Zask snarled at Amistar.

"Oh, I've always been killin' you," the culprit defended himself, "You never stood a chance." Zask grew furious, not because of the words, but of what they referred to. An Amistar member had once gone against one of his top fighters, who the Zask leader had claimed could beat any opponent the rival team could throw at him. The match ended with the Zask fighter on the floor, crying.

Putting forth a sadistic smile, the angered denizen raised his fist to the words, "You shouldn't have said that, 'cause he happens to be a friend of mine!" In truth, he wasn't, but anyone was a friend compared to this rotten bag of-

Amistar socked him right in the jaw. A bit shocked from the blow, Zask stumbled back and put a hand to his mouth. "Go on, cry," spat the rotten bag.

"Get up, you baby!" the leaders jeered as the made a circle around the two. "Punish him!" they shouted, wanting to see the one guilty for their fall hurt. Bad. Beyond repair. And Zask wholeheartedly wanted to deliver that.

"PK-"

"STOP!"

Everyone froze. The cry had not come from any of them. It had come from behind, from the darkness of the cave that their fall had left them in. All thirteen of them turned slowly to the back of the cavern. They peered into the gloom but saw nothing. Then a light burst forth, eradicating the shadows. It was green and violent, and the leaders were forced to shield their eyes until they adjusted. When they could see again, they saw that the back of the cave was actually the front of a house. It was simple and dark, the only features showing on this wall a sturdy window and a large door. And in the doorway, holding the emerald light in his raised hand, was the Singe Master.

…

It was a miracle, put simply. He had been able to stop them in time. Not only was it impressive that they listened to him, but that he actually spoke. His vocal chords had remained largely unused for decades. There had been no use for them, him being alone with only his thoughts. Then he realized he could not remember the last time he had been in a conversation. 300 years, perhaps?

He refocused his eyes on the group in front of him and noticed they were staring at him in a peculiar way. True, he guessed he was a rather uncomfortable sight, but it was almost as if he was barely visible. "_Oh!_" he exclaimed to himself, "_I must be blinding them with the light._" He relaxed his hand, causing the light emanating from it to calm.

They kept staring at him; he felt confirmed that his appearance was ghastly. He had to do something to reach across the gap that he looks were undoubtedly creating. He opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out. He tried again, forcing more effort into his throat. Still silence. The urgency brought about by seeing them fighting had been just enough to get his tongue to work, but now he found he could not use it. He became nervous. Then his heartbeat quickened. The Other Flame rushed through his body, and he channeled it, concentrated it, into his lungs and throat. The green fire burned and soothed their targets, forcing his will to be done.

He spoke. "Why have you come?"

…

Upon hearing his words, they would have frozen completely if they weren't already. Everyone knew that their silence was dangerous, but no one dared speak. "_Talk to him!_""_Show them all up!_""_You've found him; now do what you came to do!_" At least one of these was present in all of the group's ruler heads. Yet no one took action. Awkward turned to uncomfortable, uncomfortable turned to nervous, nervous turned to panic, and panic turned to fright. Fear had reared its unpleasant head once again and this time no one was hiding it.

When all hope seemed to be lost, the Giant began form a word, sound coming slowly and slippery through his lips. But one who had remained quiet until then took up the role of speaker for him. "Are you a Singe Master?" asked Ichine, leader of a lowly team in the Arena.

Now it was the other's turn to be silent. He looked at the speaker quizzically for a few seconds, then nodded. "Verily."

Few in the crowd knew what 'verily' meant, but luckily Ichine was one of them. "I see…" he chose his words carefully. "In that case, we've come to ask a favor," he continued bearing the wording of the Master's question in mind.

Another long, quizzical look. Then, "What kind of favor do you need?"

Another pause to think of the right words. Then he decided that the best choice was to put it bluntly. "A big one."

The reply came quicker this time. "How big?"

The orator let out a deep breath. It was time for the truth. "Very big. Huge."

The Singe Master nodded in understanding. "Such things would be better discussed inside." He stepped aside of the doorway and held back the door. "Will you come in?"

The Onettsons suddenly felt threatened, like he was trying to underhandedly trick them into getting trapped in his madhouse. The only thing they saw inside the opened entrance was darkness, and that did not help at all. Instead of coming forward, some backed up, and others let ringers run across clenching hands. Then, to the surprise of all, Knknights walked slowly away from the group, towards the Singe Master. "Alright," he agreed simply.

The others, again, froze. Then they too came forward at the same slow pace behind Knknights, and one-by-one filed into the house. None looked toward the one holding the door open for them as they passed. Inside, everything was dark. Pitch black. An absolute lack of light. Then the door slammed shut behind them, and they realized they were all locked inside.

…

They were all strangely on edge, or so he surmised. He could not rightly judge their behavior after meeting them so soon, but he could not shake the feeling that something was making the crowd…was 'uncomfortable' the word?

When the last one stepped into his house, he himself walked in and shut the door. As soon as he did, he felt the already high tension rise dramatically. One of the demons whispered to him, _"You are frightening them; you are doing something wrong."_ Before he could stop it, the Singe Master began to worry. Had he not been polite when he met them? Had he forgotten proper etiquette over his long solitude? Then he remembered that the Onettsons observed no etiquette, so this could not be the answer. What was?

All of a sudden he felt the tension in the air again. Then the sound of a question. "Umm, why is there no light in here?"

"_That's it. That must be why they're nervous._" Yet this answer seemed oddly insufficient. Why would they be so troubled by the darkness? True, he was always a bit unsettled after having his vision taken away from him, but this felt like something greater.

But there was no time to ponder that now. They needed light, so he would give it to them. "The light is right here," he said as he shot a spark of Singe into the ceiling. The spark lighted on the center of an almost hidden system of vein-like channels spanning across the ceiling. These thin channels were covered with a rare substance that Singe easily burned on, and were designed in such a way to provide light equally over the house.

Now that had been easily taken care of. He turned back to his 'visitors', or he believed that was what they were, and was disappointed to see them still on edge. He gave his head a barely perceivable shake, telling himself that if they were in as much need as they claimed to be then nervousness did not matter.

…

Now that there was light, the first thing Ichine noticed about the appearance of the house was that it was littered with books. In the brightest spots of the room, the many small hills of stacked literature formed miniature mountain ranges, guarding opened manuscripts within their boundaries. Books lay on tables, books lay on chairs, and books lay on shelves. Most of them were not very large, just a dozen or so pages between two flimsy covers. However, some were just the opposite, with so many pages it made his brain hurt to try to comprehend all the reading it demanded. Not only that, but his mind was also strained by seeing so many books in one place. He had never seen more than one at a time since…well, he came to Onett. They were not a common thing.

Compared to the clutter of books, everything else was tidy and organized. Everything from the placement of furniture to the scraps of paper on them was placed and spaced evenly. It seemed even the color of objects was taken into consideration when they were set down. The colors themselves were, in a word, plain, giving an air of 'business as usual' to the whole area. The room was large and open allowing it to easily fit the many tables, chairs, bookcases, and, of course, them. On either side of the room they were in a large opening to another one stood. As he was turning his head to face the owner of this place, Ichine was spoken to directly by said owner. "You said that you needed a 'very big favor'. I assume you mean to discuss it?"

Indeed, he did mean to discuss it, but he wasn't sure if the others were; they still seemed hesitant to be in the house. But just in case they weren't, and since chances to unsettle them were rare, the boy said, "Yes, we're ALL ready to discuss it." The Singe Master nodded and led them to the opening in the left wall of the chamber, which brought them to a convenient conference room. The long table in the middle marked it as such, and the numerous tall chairs only added to the convenience. "_You'd think this guy's been expecting us for a while…_" Ichine thought nervously as he walked up to one of the chairs in the back. Much like him, the other leaders came up behind the chairs but did not sit down in them. Instead they kept their eyes trained on their host. And it was now, it being their first time to really see him in the light, that they noticed he wore a mask. This led to him losing a few more trust points, of which he did already not have many. All of a sudden they were wondering if was best for them to put their faith, and maybe even their fate, in this person's hands. Yet as their fingers traced the light cushioning on the backs of the chairs, they suddenly remembered how tired they were from climbing, running, and getting caught in explosions. First one, then another, then another took their seat. The Singe Master went to the head of the table where one of the few remaining seats was left and took his place at the conference.

They waited. For something, nothing specific, just something to give them a push. They waited. The Giant, who had decided he had endured enough awkwardness for one day, pushed them. "So…you really are a Singe Master?"

The masked master seemed to look at the table for a moment, and then said almost timidly, "I think I would have already proven that, yes."

The Giant considered the displays of power he had shown: shooting green sparks from his hand, casting green light. It was only two acts, but it was beyond the abilities of any normal Onettson he knew of. "You have proven it."

Silence again. Then, unable to hold it in any longer, the Juntar leader blurted out, "Why are you wearing that mask?" Everyone stared at him. "Is there a _reason_ to cover your eyes?"

Everything about the Singe Master seemed to stop. He looked back towards the table for another moment, then looked up and curtly said, "Battle scars,"

Juntar started to say something else, reconsidered, and sat back quietly, content with the answer. "Oh."

…

It's true; he was wearing a mask, wasn't he? It had been so long since he had last noticed how his sight was affected; he had grown used to it. The mask was a part of him, and since it was a part of him he never saw it was nearly forgotten. But it was there, remembered or not, and it was there now, drawing unwanted attention. And he wanted that attention elsewhere.

"So," he began, "You said you needed a 'very big favor'?" The others looked among themselves, and all eyes agreed to land on their speaker before: Ichine. The boy knew he would be selected, but it was clear he didn't appreciate it. But his fate was accepted (more by the others, not him) and he took up the conversation.

"Yes…" he sounded rather nervous. "We have a problem down in Onett. It…uhhh…we've really had it for a long time." The Master nodded and waited to hear more. "You, know the Dominter, right?" he asked rather hurriedly. With all of his visits to the town over the years mainly consisting of him looking in on some Arena matches, the Master was well aware of the Dominter team. After he had nodded assent, the story was continued with another question. "Well, then you also know how they always win and nobody likes them for it?" Another nod. "Okay, well, a few weeks ago-"

Zask interrupted, "It was more than few weeks, moron! More like months!" The Singe Master noted that he apparently was big on details.

Ichine gave an eye roll that said 'whatever, I could care less', and then finished what he was going to say. "A few **months** ago, they got a new member. He's really young, some say not even twenty. Well, ever since he appeared things have been getting worse. They've been getting more aggressive somehow, and they make it a point to injure whoever they face in the Arena."

It was now that Ichine lost his role as the sole speaker for the group; Knknights jumped in. "But they've done so much more than that! Now they're hurting people outside of the Arena! And for no reason!"

The knight's companions were clearly roused by his words, and offered many a word of agreement. "Almost _killed_ one of my guys…" The Giant muttered. Intrigued by their passion, the mask-bearer leaned in to hear all that he could. Unfortunately, his movement reminded them that they were on a bunny-trail. As they sat back and shut their mouths in uniform, he once again searched his memories for anything that could be unsettling them.

Ichine began to speak again, "Well, you can see that they left…an impression. They just go around, and if anyone gets within five feet of them they pick a fight."

"Only they can't fight back…" the Giant grumbled. The smaller leader looked towards him and nodded. "I'm not sure what they're trying to prove, well at least I wasn't. But I see'em, congratulating each other after they maim someone in the Arena, and they talk about how much they showed they were better than everyone else. And then they go out and hurt random Onettsons in the night." The giant had grown louder, obviously mad by their blasphemy, but had to stop his speech because of it.

The Singe Master paused, considering the Dominters' motive. He looked around the room, although no one could tell, and said, "It seems they are trying to flaunt their power and their authority by exercising it as much as they can." The others pondered this solution, considering first its logic and then its flaws.

"I don't think it matters _why _they're doing it," Amistar broke the silence, "I think it matters what we're going to do about it."

"Alright then," the masked one said, "So, they're intentionally injuring their opponents in the Arena, they've been attacking random people for no reason outside of the Arena, and it all seems to be because of their new member, who is very young," he listed matter-of-factly. "Anything else?"

"Umm…" the group hummed unanimously, thinking of any other offences. Tigret found one. "They've been like, destroying…stuff," he finished lamely.

"'Stuff'?" Zask said with his eyebrows raised. "That must be DANGEROUS." And he successfully earned himself a vengeful glare.

The Singe Master failed to understand the interplay between them, but he un-shruggingly shrugged it off. To get them back on track he asked, "'Stuff' such as…?"

"They burned down one house," the Giant volunteered.

"And blew up the side of a few others," Knknights added.

"And they threatened to get rid of me team," Ichine said, although he knew no one really cared. "And our base." This caused three others to reveal similar threats made to them or someone in their team. The Singe Master noted all the reports down and added them to his list of the Dominter's offences.

They were silent again, but the air held a feeling of finality in it. The Master concluded that it was time to change subjects. "So…what do I have to do with any of this?" Instantly he could tell his question made them uncomfortable, so he rephrased his words. "What do you want me to do?" Relaxing slightly, they pondered just what it was that they needed him for.

After a moment, an idea was struck. "Give 'em a taste of their own medicine!" Juntar said, or rather shouted. "Get rid of 'em! It shouldn't be hard to scare them back!"

"So you're saying to threaten them," the Master said.

"No! More than that!"

"To forcibly threaten them."

"Sure…"

The Giant shook his head. "That wouldn't work. You couldn't scare the Dominter, not even if all of Onett stood up against them." Many of the leaders were offended that he didn't use the slang 'Dumbinter', but they kept quiet because they could not help but reluctantly agree. "You'd have to do something…smarter." Juntar's eyes burst into a flaming rage, but no one pretended to notice.

The Master thought about this, and then said, "I'm not sure what you mean by that."

"Well, I don't know. You'd have to think of something."

"That would require time. And time appears to be something you don't have a lot of." In spite of this, the Singe Master went over the basic strategies for defeating one's enemies that he had memorized. "_Fake out, no. Brute force, no. Double sided attack, no. Taking out the power source…yes._" He gazed over the room until his eyes found the original speaker and asked, "What did you say about the new member of their team?"

"Uh, well, he's very young, and he wears some sort of hat." No, no. That wasn't what he was asking about at all. "And ever since he showed up, things have been going wrong." That was it.

He asked, "So he is the source of all of your problems?"

Juntar's eyes lit up again, although this time with realization. "Yeah, you're right. So get rid of him! That's the person we shoulda been after!"

Even with the mask covering his eyes, it could easily be seen that the Master looked at the leader coldly. "Are you suggesting that I kill a fellow Onettson?" This was met with an immediate chorus of 'no' from the conference, who as any Onettson disagreed with killing. It was simply unaccepted in their society, as it was much better to beat them senseless instead.

"Well, ya gotta do something," Zask murmured, "and fast!" Taking this to heart, the Master ran all the propositions through his mind: get rid of them, a smarter plan, taking out the power source, the Dominter's new member, and no killing.

Suddenly, there it was! The answer to the riddle came as the all the battle plans blended into one. He now saw the way put the rampaging team back into check, although not quite complete. But the small gaps in it would be resolved with just a little time. He faced the leaders of Onett. "I have a plan."

…

With the last of them out the door, the leaders prepared to leave. They felt quite proud of themselves. They had set out to do the impossible, and were coming home victorious. They had searched for a legend, and they had found it. And finally, after all this time, they could finally take revenge on the Dumbinter.

The leader of the Tricon turned back to the Singe Master, who was standing in his doorway. With traces of doubt still lingering inside him, he asked, "You're sure the plan will work?"

The Master looked him in the eye, or at least it looked like it, and nodded. "Verily."

Nodding back, the Giant turned around to join the rest of the group as they were heading out. But then he stopped, a last question in his mind. "What…what is your name?" he asked the legend.

The Singe Master paused, stood up straighter, and said, "Aven." He turned around and looked into his house. "Aven is my name." And he closed the door.

**Whelp. That's that. After my extended absence, I'm back. This might've been posted a little sooner, but I caught my friend's cold. And my mom caught my cold. But no one caught her cold. And now that's done.**

**SO! We've returned to longer chapters! I hope it excuses some of the time, but my delays are really due to me being lazy. And watching too many Youtube videos. But anyway, I'll try to get the next one out sooner.**

**On to the replies! There are only two, but meh.**

**TheMysticalQ: Is your head back to normal now? Well, actually, there USED to be a group of Singe-users protecting Onett, but now it's just Aven. The next chapter will be mainly dedicated to finding out what's happened to Ness, but I do plan on having some of Lucas in there, though I can't say how much right now. Hmm…sorry about the filler-fights, I'll try to do better with my future ones. And you would be correct; Singe users are dangerous. What did you think of the one in this chapter?**

**PenfullofChaos819 (chapter 10 review): Well, well, well; look who's back! And no, I don't encourage using plaster in your hairstyle. "Statues' statutes", I see what you did there. I understand Lucas's plight to be frustrating to…many of my readers, but I assure you his situation will not stay the same. Yeah, no one really cares about the judicial branch much, do they? Except for shoe shiners…and lawyers. No, in Onett you don't really have the choice not to fight, unless you want to be shunned and mocked. To me, your insight seems quite good, but I'm not you so I can't really say. Ya know, I never noticed that I made Link the most vocal one until you pointed it out. That is ironic! You couldn't be more right about how much that affects your performance in battle! And about fried foods. I appreciate that you got the whole 'internal commands' thing; I was afraid no one would understand. Wait, that's a Porky reference!? Gosh, you may know more about Earthbound than I do *feels slightly ashamed*! But no, the Dominter don't accept anything but the best, which adds to them being jerks. And yes! Ness remembers Lucas, and this is a pivotal part of the story. And Happy Belated Easter to you too! I'll see you when can find the time next!**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	13. On the Brink of Mind

**I would like to start by clarifying something. The last two chapters were a bit of a time jump ahead of chapter 10, and this chapter is moving back to a day or two ahead of the events in chapter 10. Also, the mysterious POVs at the end of chapter 3 and chapter 7 (although technically it was the 2****nd**** to last POV) were both Aven's, just so that's cleared up. You can go back to reread those section if you like. They should make more sense now.**

**Anyways, this chap sees us returning to the normal characters, and while you read this bear in mind all that was done and said in chapter 12. The happenings here should tie in.**

_**Note: I originally uploaded this chapter on May 17, but later found that it was riddled with an unprofessional amount of errors and typos. Because of that, I deleted it, edited the chapter, and have now re-uploaded it. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.**_

**So, without further ado…**

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 13: On the Brink of Mind

His first emergence out of the darkness began with it growing. Somehow, the strengthening of the force assailing him led to its own weakening. If he were back home, he might've contemplated the truthful irony the fact held, but his mind was poisoned. Such things were an impossibility now, because the fading power in him provided only enough to obey his orders or to refuse them.

This incident had caused Lucas to realize that in some mythical, distant land, there was more than grey. In its place, there were the contrasted whites and blacks. Not everything was black; some things were pure and worth holding on to. Not everything was white; some things were ugly and worth staying away from. But there was still grey in the world, and it could be that grey was dominant. Yet that did not seem like how it should be. What should be is white, but what is, was grey and black. But white was desirable to him because of its purity. For it was purity that he sought, its flawlessness desirable in the torment he endured. He searched for it in the depths of his mind, in the last bit of his might, but never, never in the walls around him. He lived in the world of grey, yet he was finding the world of white and black. For against all odds, against all the guards, against all the toil, against all the torture, against all the stone, Lucas was fighting back.

In the depths of his understanding, a word named Hope took root.

…

Lies…a cruel thing. A thing whose lack of any shame or honor scarce knew any equal. Lies were sneaky and underhanded, faithless and insulting. They dared to challenge the laws of existence and to build up walls of temporary refuge. They were the weapon of thieves, of actors, of tyrants, of deal-breakers, of schemers, and, of course, liars.

And Aaron was a liar.

Ness knew he had been lied to the face by the Dominter. Intentionally or not, he knew the only word for what had been said was 'lie'. Because of that lie, he had gone on a wild goose chase, something he, or really anyone with things to do, could not stand. Because of that goose chase, he now looked and felt like a fool, something he highly resented. Because of that feeling, he was angry, something he needed to take out. And who better to take it out on than the culprit of the whole thing.

In one way or another, Ness was going to make Aaron pay. He didn't plan on hurting him, but he intended to let the lunatic know what he had done, what had happened, and what the capper himself thought. For he had been deceived on an all-important matter, and that was not something he would let slide.

As he approached the Big Way, or the Fighting Road, or the Great Road, or the Popular Path, or…Ness decided then and there to call the large intersection leading up the Arena the Road of a Lot of Names from now on. As he walked down it, he saw a steady line of Onettsons leaking out the doors of the Arena, which was a clear indicator that evening was drawing near and the fights were beginning to come to a close. Not as clear as the sky darkening through the hole in the Mountain, but it never hurt to have two ways of telling things. He did, however, and it felt good to roughly brush shoulders with the mostly smaller patrons leaving as he entered. He came through the only door with people coming out of specifically for this reason, disregarding the less obstructed and less-out-of-the-way other doorways. It was for this reason also that he walked so that he blocked the view of those trying to watch the match.

He made it to the entry of the training room and slammed the door behind him. Those he could already see in the room gave him no notice as if he wasn't there. This only made him angrier. Then, across the room, standing amongst the bleachers and talking with Link, was Aaron. Ness had no mind to let them continue talking. But when he stormed through the bleachers and came up behind the two, something strange happened. He suddenly remembered who it was he was mad at and what position and power this person held over him. He realized just how little Aaron would care about what he would have to say. He was a superior of the Arena and a leader of the city. But he was also a liar. And Ness would not let a liar get away with his trade.

"Hey!" The boy called. Aaron and Link looked up at him, both obviously annoyed. He decided to get straight to the point. "You're a liar," he said directly to Aaron.

"You're one to talk." Ness knew he was going to get this type of answer from him, but it still grated his nerves.

"Yeah, and I'd like us to do that now." Among the Dominter, he had learned that a quick response was typically better than a smart response. Aaron face-palmed, sensing that he would not be getting any peace until he complied, and gave Link both a sigh and a look that told the boy to leave him alone for a while. Link did, and Aaron turned slowly around to face Ness, all the while leaning lazily against a banister.

"What!?" he asked threateningly. "What's gone wrong with you now?"

"YOU," Ness retorted, eyes lighting up. "YOU are what's wrong!"

The other rolled his eyes as he muttered, "And might I hear why, or am I too wrong to deserve that?"

"Almost," the capper growled. "But it would be pretty pointless if we argued over nothing, wouldn't it?"

"Pointless; exactly."

"There was someone else with me when I was captured. He was my friend, and you said he was somewhere in Onett. But that's where you lied," Aaron raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. "He isn't here. In fact, I'm pretty sure he never got out of the helicopter. And you knew that all along!"

"Oh, did I?" the older one replied, "And how could I have known that? I've never even seen the kid!"

"Maybe…" Ness paused, letting the implication of what he had said sink in. "But either way, you still knew what happened to him."

"Any REASONS for this idea of yours?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Ness adjusted his cap, then continued. "When I met you guys, that wasn't the first time you had fought those helicopters or rescued someone from them."

"First correct thing you've said," Aaron cut in. He was ignored.

"So, that means you also know that the helicopters get away sometimes, with their captives. And you knew that my friend was in one that got away." The capper looked straight into his opponent's eyes, waiting to be verified. There was another pause as the Dominter considered what to say in reply.

Then: "Alright! Yes! I knew what had happened to your friend!" Aaron burst out.

Ness began to grill him with his gaze; at least, that was the desired effect. "Then. Why. Didn't. You. Tell me." His anger was boiling inside of him. He had already decided that whatever reason Aaron gave for his lying, it wasn't good enough.

"Because I thought I was doing you a favor," the Dominter groaned. "I was trying to keep you from going all…like you are right now."

"That doesn't matter! You still should've told me!" Ness shouted in his face.

"Oh! So you wanna be insane?!" Aaron shouted right back.

"Yes," the capper said automatically, though he wasn't sure he meant it. The teacher stared back, feeling that silence served as the proper answer now. Apparently, Ness agreed. There was a prolonged stillness. Long, and eventually awkward when they realized that their argument had attracted the attention of the entire training room. They must have been quite a spectacle to do that; the Dominter had witnessed as many verbal fights as they had physical, and had largely lost interest in them. Then, once the newcomer's fury cooled into strong resolve, he turned away to the exit. "I'm going to find him. I'm leaving."

He had only taken a few steps when he heard Aaron say, "You can't." Ness ignored the liar. "He's dead." Ness stopped.

Aaron was a liar…right?

"How…" the capper looked slowly back, "do you know that?"

"I didn't kill him if that's what you're thinking." In truth, this was exactly what Ness was thinking. "I've never seen this kid, but I do know who has. Because you've apparently FORGOTTEN, it's the humans who captured you and your friend."

This wasn't good enough. "How do you know that it was them?" Ness shot back. "You have NEVER seen them!"

"Oh, I've seen enough!" the Dominter yelled back. "I saw them kick mud at me when I walked by! I saw them beat me as I was pinned down! I saw them threaten my life! I saw them burn my house to the ground! I saw them kill my uncle! AND THEY KILLED YOUR FRIEND TOO!"

Ness stared, a mixture of different emotions colliding on his face: horror, anger, confusion. Aaron was a liar…right?

Link stepped up behind Aaron, saying, "That's what they do to all of us. They don't want us around. They don't want to know we even exist! So they kill us!" He began walking toward the younger one, gesturing with his hand. "And ya wanna know why? Ya wanna know WHY they want us dead so badly?" He stopped, his finger mere inches from the capper's face. "Because we're different; that's why."

"He's right," the rest of the team said in chorus.

"It's all they want with us: less than nothing," spat Matt.

Ness took a few steps back from Link's hand, from the whole situation in fact. He tried to look at all the information that had just been thrust at him, but it was too much. He took a few more steps back from the Dominter, then turned and ran to the door. He needed to sort some things out.

As he opened it up, Aaron called after him, "Don't you think for a second that the humans wouldn't have rejected you, even your own family."

The boy paused, and then turned his head back. "Did your family really disown you?" Aaron nodded gravely. Then Ness shut the door.

…

Past the Arena gates; past the Road of a Lot of Names; past the claustrophobic traffic of Onettsons; past even the jam-packed buildings of the city; where was he? With the deepening darkness combined with the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, Ness found himself very disoriented, especially in his current mood. Which raised the question: what was his current mood? He felt infuriated over Aaron's lies, shocked by the humans' actions, and perplexed over the Onettsons' reactions to them. He really didn't know what to feel, or how to feel it, so he forgot his feelings and focused all his concentration into his walking. It went well for a while, but his emotions kept trying to make themselves remembered, and no matter how many times he shoved them down they kept returning.

A soft crunch under his step directed his gaze downward. To his surprise, he had found his way to a patch of lush, dark green grass. Looking onward, he found that it was much more than a patch. Rather, he was in the beginnings of a large field. His surprised doubled; he was used to the dusty rock that took up the majority of the ground in Onett. But here the floor was green, and he appreciated the change.

Slightly encouraged, he moved straight on and did his best to think about his new surroundings instead of his new problems. He asked himself where he was, and puzzled over any possible answers. The only garden-like places that he knew of in Onett were not many and he certainly wasn't at any of them. He was on the outskirts of the town, which were supposed to be barren and uninteresting. So what was this?

A shadow that was not cast by the looming walls of the Mountain fell upon him, and he looked up and saw…a tree. He performed an almost comical double-take. "_A TREE!? They have trees here too?_" he wondered in astonishment. It had been months since he had seen anything larger than a small bush. And beside this many-leaved wonder were the roots of countless other ones just like it and completely different at the same time. By their leaves grey an array of varying fruits, and then in Ness's brain a light went on. "_Of course!_" he told himself, "_This is where they grow the food for Onett._" The food in the Boys' Town was mostly meat from the desert creatures found in and outside the mountain, and considering all the patrons here were male, meat was the most popular food choice.

But this was a classic case of "too much of a good thing", and every now and then something other than beef was wanted, and that was where the fruit came in. Ness had never really known where it had come from, but there was no doubt in his mind now that he had found its source.

But history lesson aside, he didn't want fruit. He wanted rest, to sort through his emotions in peace. And looking through the leaves softly floating up and down in the light breeze, he knew this place could give that to him. He resumed his walking again, although this time with a quicker pace, and ventured silently into the grove.

He ducked under limbs, dodged trunks, and brushed through leaves. Suddenly, a shimmering glint caught his eye and he skidded to a stop. Looking down, he saw he was on the edge of a small oasis in the center of the garden, with waves quietly lapping at its sides. If there was any place where he needed to sort out his problems, this was it.

He sank to the ground, and doing so realized that it had been hours since he had last sat down. Running his hand through his bangs, he decided not to delay the inevitable and opened his mind back up to his swirling emotions. Instantly he found himself asking questions that he was sure had no answer. They asked what were lies and what was not, who was good and who was not, but at the core of it all they screamed _"what has happened to Lucas!?"_ This question was where the whole thing started, and was destined to be where it ended. Was he dead? Had he been killed? By the humans? And if so, what did that mean? Aaron was right? Would he himself really have become an outcast if he had not been taken here? _What had happened to Lucas?_

He clutched his head and groaned. This was getting him nowhere. Go figure; questions weren't answers, and questions were all he was giving. Besides, no one was here to respond to them, and even if they were they couldn't give him any solutions. It was just him. He was alone in this matter, and alone he must face it.

But…how? What did he know that could possibly get him to the bottom of all this? All he had was what Aaron had told him, and he wasn't even sure if that was true or not! How in the world could he possibly figure this out on his own!? He knew _NOTHING!_

In the midst of his rage, a small voice in the back of his head called to him, "_You know one thing._" Ness paused and considered the one thing he knew. "_I know that Lucas and me were captured, and we were captured for a reason._" But who would capture them…? Could the humans actually have…

But why? There was no reason for them to try to capture him and Lucas, especially in those helicopter…things. If they were going to capture them because they were Onettsons, wouldn't it be a lot simpler just to like, throw a net over the two them and dump them into some PK-proof jail cell? It couldn't have been the humans; it just didn't make any sense. So the only other potential culprits were…nobody. His searched his memories for anyone, any_thing_, that could be responsible for his abduction. Nothing came up, nothing beside the humans.

But could the people whom he grew up with, talked with, played with, really hate him that much? The rest of his team had said that they had all almost gotten killed, but …were they really that different? Was difference really despised that much? Lucas had been different, especially from him, but they had still been best friends! …well, actually, a big part of their friendship was them both being Onettsons. Still…

Ness thought about how everyone else had treated Lucas, but the first thing that came to his mind was the bullying. From Big Bob to own his sister, from physical to verbal abuse, he had been bullied his whole life, and the capper had no idea why. Was it because he wouldn't fight back? Was it because of his, admittedly, unusually strong love of nature? Was it because he tended to distance himself from others? Was it because he was…different?

"_He-he really was different. They really did…hate him._" Ness felt like his realization was blow to the stomach. Difference was a flaw to humanity, a blemish standing out against an otherwise perfect skin. Onettsons were nothing but an exception to everything normal in the world, and had been purged because of it. He himself was of the survivors, those who had been lucky enough to make it to their own society. And they hated him. They hated everything around him: the pool, the trees, the rocks, the boys. They hated Onett. And… And… Ness choked.

And they had killed Lucas.

Lucas had never escaped. He'd been too scared to. And the humans had been able to do whatever they wanted to him; and that was slaughter. Shameless, merciless slaughter of his difference. That was what they had planned for Ness, but he had escaped. In his freedom though, he had completely forgotten about Lucas. All of a sudden, he remembered the one helicopter that had gotten away when he had escaped, and how he had utterly dismissed it at the time. How could he have been so STUPID!?

"RRRGGHHAAA! PK Landslide!" The ground burst up and catapulted forward through the pool and the trees, throwing plants and water alike aside. The capper stared at the product of his rage, still seething. He had torn the tranquility of this place and ruined its beauty, leaving the oasis marred. He kept staring, and as his thoughts swirled viciously inside his head, they reached a pointed conclusion:

The world hated him, and he hated it right back.

…

The resistance began in Lucas's deepest moment of despair. Of course, at that point he did not know despair because he was drowning, choking on the grey. But despair was in him, and had been accumulating since he had been thrown into the grey to die. Nevertheless, he remained dully unaware of it until one day he was taken out of his cell to work with the dim realization that he was sad. It was not the kind of sad that comes with tears streaming down your face as you watch someone die, nor was it the kind of sad that comes from setting your hopes high, only for them to be dropped deep. It was simply the kind of sad that is a reaction to the surrounding evil. Lucas felt it, but he did not know why. Today was no viler than any other, so he saw no reason for himself to be.

But vile the day was, and him with it, as he slaved, mixing, removing, and burning, over a boiling vat of glowing yellow muck in the floor. While inside the sadness grew to depression, then to bitterness, then to wretchedness. His entire being felt disgusted and shriveled, and he felt himself teetering on the edge of uncontained insanity.

His guards didn't escort him back to his cell; they dragged him. At first when he didn't move away from his own respective muck pit, they shocked him. It was a poor name to Lucas, really; he didn't feel shocked at all. After their initial strikes, the statues went for a more direct route and kindly seized him by the arms and hauled the limp (though slightly convulsing body) back to its cell. They dropped him at the back of the room and left on the same beat.

Deposited behind bars, alone on the floor, Lucas's convulsing calmed down to a steadier twitching. It was now that he came of the mind that he would be more comfortable on the stone seat. Clawing at the ground, he pulled himself over to the protruding bench so that he could finish his torment in relaxation. He was about to pull himself up to it—"No. Don't do it." His hand fell to the ground.

That voice…was in his mind…and it wasn't his. And he had obeyed it, in accordance with his daily submission. But he had followed its command out of more than habit; he had followed it because he…had to. It was a strange feeling that stemmed from his earliest alliances. It told him that the voice was rooted in them, where dominion was without question. Yet despite this, Lucas knew he had never heard this voice before. Slowly, something which had become dulled by his torture began to rise.

He blinked. What had just happened? Oh, right. He needed to lie in the chair. He pushed himself up to it. _"I already told you, don't do it."_ Again, he froze, and then complied. _"Good. Now I don't know who you are, but I know you."_ Lucas blinked again. _"You've been so very sad living here," _the voice continued, _"but the __**whole world **__is sad. So you must be sadder than the rest of it, __**you know**__?"_ It made sense: in a world made up of only grey depression, the saddest are the strongest. Suddenly this seemed to him the only way he could achieve strength, as all his other attempts had failed. _"The problem__** is that you are not**__ sad enough."_ Lucas turned his head away from his own thoughts in shame. _"I am, and that is why I am here. Do you understand?"_

Lucas croaked out, "Y-ye-yes-"

"_**Stop.**__ Silence is always the answer."_

The voice was right; it was wrong to talk back. He could hear his mother telling him, "It is impolite." Wait…

"_Now listen closely __**from now on**__." _His mother…no…

"_Always listen, and things will go better for you."_ No, no, no, no, no…!

"_This is __**how things are**__. Do you understand?" _He couldn't let it have that, not his mother! Not what he held most dear!

"…_what are you __**doing?**__"_

A kind of power rose up in Lucas, the kind that does not come from sadness, and pushed forth a desperate bravery in him he had never experienced before. "L-l-leave…"

"_**Huh?**__"_

Then a surge of anger bridled up in a din that the walls of the prison had never heard before. "LEAVE ME! GO AWAY! NEVER COME BACK!"

Silence.

Lucas realized something. He was alone, and not only that but HE was alone. Not a statue. Not a slave. Not grey. Just him, Lucas. He was himself again, and the voice had fled him. His breath came out in an odd yet comforting way, in what he had forgotten was a sigh of relief. Shakily, he stood one foot at a time and slowly made his way forward. In a second act of defiance, he carefully lay himself down on the seat he had been told not to use.

He analyzed his actions as he lay, and he saw in them strength. This astounded him, as he could recall that he had not been one of strength even before his capture. So him…Lucas…strong? His mind told him that it did not make sense, but it also told him that in some way it must be true. And if he was strong, and if he had driven off the voice-whatever it really was-then did that mean he was not truly lost? Did that mean he could fight back?

Weariness overtook the lad and closed his eyes. And amidst the guards groaning, and the captives toiling, and the grey growing, Lucas went to sleep.

**Maracta: Yay! LUCAS! Hope! Revival!**

**Nacartor: COMPLETION!**

**Maracta: I am so happy for Lucas! And Ness…you have it all wrong! He is alive! Lucas is ALIVE! He isn't dead! **

**Nacartor: MORE COMPLETION!**

**Maracta: I find it increasingly interesting that I still get so emotional over these chapters even though I know the whole plot line! Good job, Nacartor!**

**Nacartor: COMPLETION! MWAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!**

…_**Anyways**_**, I am obviously very excited about getting this chapter out. I actually intended this to be a bit longer, but decided that I could save that bit for the next chapter. Besides, the sooner I publish this, the better. Also, I recently deleted "Delay Note and Preview" from the story 'cause it just wasn't needed anymore.**

**I only got two reviews for the last chapter, which probably had to do with my slow updating speed. Speaking of my updating speed, my chapters nowadays average 15 pages long, excluding the ending notes. I've been considering shortening my chapters so I can get them out to you faster. I'm thinking that I would aim to move my average down to about 7 pages (excluding notes) and one POV long if I did this. Chapters would, of course, hold much less content, but they would come quicker. So, what do you think AWIRT? Is it a good idea, or is it a bad idea? I can set up a poll if that'll help. Let me know in the reviews.**

**Maracta: By the way…PLEASE REVIEW.**

**So, on to the replies!**

**Guest: …Is this satisfactory? I had actually planned to keep Lucas out of this chapter, but your review was just enough for the rest of my family to convince me otherwise. And you know what? You were all right; adding Lucas really did benefit the chapter!**

**Maracta: So…congratulations! You successfully influenced the chapter! **

**Nacartor: Expect to see more of Lucas in the future!**

**TheMysticalQ: Well, I hope your head is better by now and this chapter was clearer. Is it/was it? Anywho, I think you got to see some interesting moments with Ness in this chap, or at least I hope they were interesting. Yeah, the mysterious "Dominter destruction" of Onett talked about by the leaders of Onett is going to be brought more and more into the light, especially in the next chapter, so you can look forward to that. I tried very hard to give AWIRT the impression of someone who is completely out of touch with society when writing Aven, because, well, he is. I'm glad you like that, it means a lot. Also, first impressions can be deceiving…**

**Well, that does that. Oh yeah, I'M ON SUMMER BREAK! PRIVATE SCHOOL SCHEDUALS FTW! Hope you enjoyed the chapter AWIRT, and please tell me whether or not I should make the following chapters shorter.**

**This is Nacartor (and Maracta!) of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	14. Let It Burn

**Well, based on the little feedback I received last chapter (by the way, how many people still read this story?), I've decided to make this chapter a shorter one. However, I took a ten-day vacation to the Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, then one two additional vacations, which of course interrupted the writing process of this chapter. I also worked on two Legend of Zelda oneshots, began a short story, and wrote a few other things during this break. I did post of those Zelda oneshots, so I'd appreciate it if you'd go check it out if you're a fan of the series.**

**But anywho, on to this chapter. This takes place almost right after the end of the second-to-last POV in the last chap.**

**Hey, ya know what? Let's do another disclaimer! That'll be fun: Cut Productions does not own Earthbound. Nintendo owns Earthbound. I dunno why there would be any confusion on that matter, because 'Cut Productions' looks, sounds, and is spelled nothing like 'Nintendo'.**

**So, without further ado…**

_To God be the Glory_

Onettsons

Chapter 14: Let It Burn

Running away was a very unfamiliar subject to Ness. In his whole life, he had only run away from several things, and these instances were few and far between. He was a resolute boy and hard-headed at times, so he was more likely to charge headfirst into his problems than flee from them. So whenever he did flee, it was from things that he could not jump in and attack. And normally, that was himself. In times of uncertainty or loneliness, he did his best to forget his troubles.

But now Ness was running from something more, something other than his own insecurities. He was running from what he had done, what others had done to him, and what had been done outside of him. Really, though, he didn't know what he was trying to escape; he just had to run away. Back through the trees, the grassy meadows, and the dusty fields he sped, fighting back tears as he ran. He was already in enough pain; he didn't need the blow to his pride that crying brought.

He kept going until eventually he passed the first building of the town. He wished it wasn't there. He didn't want to be where everybody could see him, but he had to keep running. So, on he went, deeper and deeper into the city and seen by more and more Onettsons. He kept his head down and tried to block them out with the tears and troubles chasing him. But as the streets became crowded and backed up, he realized that the traffic wouldn't allow him to do that. He couldn't exactly hide in such an environment, so the capper turned sharply and ducked into the first alley he came upon, which was on the left. It was only a few seconds before he altered his course again, and then again and again, and again. He was disoriented and had no idea where he was going, but at least this let him continue to run.

"_Lucas is dead! What are you doing!?_" Ness kept running.

"_The world wants you dead, too! What are you going to do about that!?_" Ness kept running.

"_All the friends you had were a lie! How do you respond to that!?_" Ness kept running.

"_You're an outcast! Even in Onett! Even to the Dominter! And this is how you react!?_" Ness kept-

**WHAM! **

The collision stole all the strength he had been using to hold back his horrors; the anxiety, the fear, and the screams were all released at once. Before he knew it, a choke, a cry, and tears were streaming down his face. He choked again, trying to reign them back in. But things had a way of being cruel in the worst of times.

"HEY! What's the big idea!?" shouted the person Ness had crashed into. "Running over people a hobby of yours or WHAT!?" Ignoring the accusations, the capper forced himself to stand up while doing his best to hide his face. The last thing he needed now was to show his tears, his weakness in front of someone he'd just provoked. What Ness didn't know, however, was that this person had a far bigger grudge against him than being run into. What Ness did know, however, was that he needed to leave, fast. And so did, or rather, tried.

"PK SNAG!" another voice called, and the Dominter's escape was cut off as something took hold of his foot from behind. "You can't just expect to be able to bump in to one of us and then run off to do it to someone else!" That voice…where had he heard it before?

"Hey guys," yet another voice began from behind, and this one was familiar too! "What this guy did was pretty impolite, don't ya think?" A chorus of agreement sounded from…uh-oh, quite a few other voices. The other familiar voice continued, "Well then, why don't we teach him some MANNERS?" An enthusiastic cheer of assent went up, but Ness hardly noticed it. These voices…he knew them, he knew them, he knew them… He knew them!

The capper's body stopped: moving, feeling, and escaping. Almost against his will, he slowly turned his gaze around to confirm his suspicions. And there they were, the three who had fought him in the alleyways of Onett: Tall, Middle and Short. And this time their gang was much bigger. It would only be a few seconds before they recognized him, and he could not let that happen.

Middle (who he had crashed into) stood up. "Hey, wait a second," he said as he stared at the back of Ness's head. "I've seen that hat before!" Another choke escaped the capper's mouth; he'd been discovered, and by his hat no less!

"Yeah…you're right! This is…this is-" Ness made a last attempt to flee, trying to reach his full speed as fast as possible. Behind him he heard, "THIS IS THE DUMBINTER!" He knew they'd come after him, he knew they'd snag him again, he knew he stood no chance against a pack like this-he kept running, he HAD to! Lucas was dead, and now him?! They couldn't catch him, he couldn't let them! But he was crying, and through his blurry vision his path blended with his obstacles.

**BAM!**

Again. On the ground AGAIN. Then the dreaded voices caught up to him, "Aaaand he gets ripped by the wall!" Before Ness even had a chance to push himself up, he was surrounded. "Seriously? You three got beat by this retard?" one of the new member's called.

"Barely, but what goes around comes around!" Short shot back, smacking his fist into his palm.

Ness turned slowly onto his stomach, keeping his head down. The second impact and the panic of his situation had sent his sobs into crazed convulsions. When he realized that he was hyperventilating, he tried to halt his breathing, focus on something else, _anything _to stop him from crying. But such a thing did not exist.

"Aww, is someone scared?" Middle said when he noticed his victim's odd behavior. The thought of his prey being frightened before he was even attacked only made the notion of revenge seem sweeter. "Not so high-and-mighty now, are you, Dumbinter?" The mockery saw much approval from the rest of the gang, who threw in their own jeers at his masculinity.

"Where's your precious team now, huh? Shoulda stayed home at the Arena!"

"Come on, give me your best shot! Blow us all away with your AMAZING skills!"

"PK LANSLIDE THIS, WONDERBOY!" Unexpectedly, Short struck out at Ness with a ringer-enhanced kick. The foot violently slid itself between the capper's face and the ground, and then flipped him harshly over to his back.

"AAGRAHH!" Even as he cried out, sobs of anger, pain, and fear rocked him, sending his chest rising and falling spasmodically. His tears were out in the open and his secret was too, and now Ness felt more vulnerable than he ever had before in his life. Why? Because it was true: he was lying defenseless and outnumbered, surrounded by a vengeful gang of thugs while being wrecked from the inside-out by his despairing emotions. His enemies now knew this, and they would take full advantage of it.

It began. "Hey guys… Is he CRYING!?" Tall exclaimed in sadistic astonishment. "Ha-Ha-Ha! What's wrong, Baby? SCARED?"

"I think running into the wall knocked some sense into him! Now he's scared like he oughta be!" Ness wanted to fight back, he wanted them to think that they didn't scare him, but he couldn't. Trauma still clung to him, calling him to insane panic, and it only grew with his fear.

It continued. "PK Bolt!" The electricity from the attack coursed through his body, causing the capper to shudder and writhe against his will. His breath was stolen away by the torture, causing him to choke as a parade of blows rained down on him from above. Thus, spasmodic gasps for air cut through his throat and hysterical tears flood out his eyes, causing more ridicule to bite into whatever was left of his psyche.

He was WEAK!

He was STUPID!

He was INADEQUETE!

He was WORTHLESS!

He wasn't TALENTED; he was a MORON! He wasn't READY; he was a BABY! He wasn't POWERFUL; he was a WIMP! He wasn't EXCEPTIONAL; he was a DISGRACE! HE WAS-

"P-K-LA**ND**_**SLIIIDE!**_"

They had dug deep into Ness, drilled through the defenses of his mind and ridiculed it, broken down all of his fronts and acts, and assaulted him at a level where few are ever breeched. It was past his most closely guarded secrets, beyond his innermost being, and even beyond his subconscious. It was the basic core of who he was, in all of his entirety. And in that was power, power that broke free and filled every part of him when his very identity was threatened.

Through him, that power caused the ground all around him to shoot upward and then outward, destroying everything in its path. Enemies were sent flying, walls were crumbled, and houses were crushed. The rushing ground slowed down and came to a stop, leaving a circle of desolation all around Ness.

Slowly, the capper stood up. His shirt was torn in multiple places, his arms were heavily bruised, and he was covered in bleeding cuts from head to toe. Panting harshly, he looked around until he spotted one of the new members to the gang. Suddenly, all knowledge of his injuries, physical and psychological, left him, and the only thing in the world became this foe.

Immediately, he saw what he had to do, and immediately, he executed it. He let out a cry of rage, and then rushed forward with ringers running up and down his hands. The brute saw him coming and tried to defend himself with his own ringer attack, but to no use. Ness's assault was by far the mightiest, and the opposition was quickly overpowered. Hands breaking through the meager resistance, the Dominter took hold of his prey and then began to spin. A yell emitted from the capper's mouth, and gradually increased its volume until it reached its crescendo as Ness threw the thug into a nearby wall. Hard.

"Hey!" someone shouted behind him. Without looking, he knew who the voice belonged to; the same one who had called him a 'wimp'. Jerking around, he saw the gang member release an attack from his hands, which quickly expanded into a web of purple, magnetic energy as it flew towards the boy. Ness stood still as he saw the seconds before impact tick down, staring at the thug through a gap in the oncoming strings of light. Then life sprung back into him, and he propelled himself through the gap, rolled, dashed, and then launched himself high into the air.

Gaping at the sheer height of the Dominter's jump, the hoodlum stumbled backward and, realizing that he was about to be crushed, sent a PK Shock skyward. Expecting this, the capper leaned back, allowing the shot to scrape past him as he turned a full back flip in midair. He landed straight on his feet, and at the same moment retaliated with his own PK Shock. Unlike the first, this one hit its target who, unlike the first, did not expect the attack. The bolt's effects gave Ness a chance to get up close to his stunned foe, and he seized it. _"PK Kick!"_ he cried as he brought his foot into his enemy's face, causing that face to bleed as it flew into the rubble-strewn ground.

But he was still alive. And that was unacceptable. He would pay back each and every one of them in full, and he wouldn't stop until he saw their tears. Their blood didn't matter; it was their crying he wanted. And he wanted it NOW!

"_PK Sting!"_ Ness jabbed his first two fingers into his fallen opponent, releasing a gasp of pain from the victim. Ness honestly didn't know if he had ever heard of this move before, but he didn't care as long as it gave him what he wanted. _"PK Sting!"_ This time he got a yell through clenched teeth. _"PK Sting!"_ This time an all-out scream. He brought his hand back for the final time; one more ought to do it. _"PK-"_

"PK Whiplash!" Instead of the gang member, the one who was stung instead was the capper himself. A strand of glowing orange energy retracted from Ness and snapped back to its holder: Short.

The Dominter spun around, furious at the intervention. He glared at the perpetrator, hatred in his eyes. The glare was returned with equal hatred. "I think I know why the Dumbinter like you," Short began. "They always wanted a stupid, screaming idiot like you!" Upon hearing his words, a mixture of different emotions rose into Ness: anger, sadness, rage. What did this thug know about him!? Nothing! He had no idea what he'd been through, and he never would! He was just a low-down bully who beat up on anyone weaker than him with his friends and acted like it was nothing!

Short cut the capper's mental rant short by shouting, "PK Spear!" Instincts kicking in at the last moment, Ness bent his body down and to the left, letting the projectile sail over him. Then, snapping out his hand, he was barely able to PK Snag Short by the upper wrist. The hold was not the best, consequently giving the Dominter trouble as he tried to pull the thug toward him. He was resisted, but his superiority in size and strength made Short's efforts futile. Stepping back as he did so, Ness gave the glowing chain a harsh tug. However, as he did so-

"PK Bolt!" His focus dissipated, and the bind on the smaller one with it, and Ness was knocked into the ground; the hard, rocky ground. Short saw his opponent downed, and he liked what he saw. Taking advantage of the moment, he ran straight for the Dumbinter, ringers spawning on his right hand. He was about to deliver the blow when suddenly he felt something strike him in the ribs, going skyward. He found himself being pushed into the air on his enemy's feet, and then being kicked over, face-first, towards the earth below him. The two had traded places; Short was lying on the ground, with the capper standing above him.

It should have been over then. He should have ended him! But Ness had forgotten the size of the pack he was dealing with, and just then two more members tackled him from behind. He stumbled towards the floor, but he refused to go down again. He fought back, throwing his foes off of him, though they still kept hold of his arms. Quickly glancing from side to side, he identified one of his restrainers as Tall. The other he did not recognize, but he was almost as big as the former. All in all, they had a very strong grip on him, but it was by no means unbreakable. But it turned out it didn't have to be.

As he began to struggle, yet another member seemingly appeared out of nowhere and punched Ness before he could even try to react. Then he was hit with a ringer punch, then a PK Punch, then a jump kick, and lastly a PK Electrify. He growled in pain, but he refused to let them get the better of him. Despite a new wave of agony, he forced himself to focus. There had to be a way out of this! He couldn't be defeated here, now! They couldn't kill him, they couldn't make him join...make him join Lucas.

No. No they couldn't. Suddenly, the pain stopped. He faintly recalled omitting a field of energy many nights ago, and the surge of power it gave him. That power had come from a projectile of the enemy, but the field had turned it into rejuvenation for him. And now he was doing the same thing. The electricity that was coming from the hands of the gang member was now reviving him. This was all because of an orb of purple, lightning-like energy that surrounded Ness: a PSI Magnet.

The sudden outburst of light from his victim caused the electrifier to soon step back from the capper, putting him right where the Dominter wanted him. Using the power that came not only from the Magnet but also his emotions, Ness stepped back, yanked his two holders into the air, and then stepped forward as he slammed both of his former restrainers into his former persecutor. They fell, lifelessly.

He stood above them, about to pass judgment when he heard the crunch of footsteps. He looked up just in time to dodge two opposing shots. The last two members of the gang had arrived, Middle being one of them. They continued to fire at Ness, and he continued to dodge. However, they managed to force him to back away from their three downed fellow thugs. This cover fire must have offered some motivation to the rest of the team, as Short, Tall, and two others slowly rose from the ground. His work was being undone.

"PK Landwall!" Ness dove behind his newly-erected cover, and felt the impacts of the blasts on the other side grow steadily stronger in number. They were eating away at the wall, and his hope, too. _Every time he was about to finish any of them, another one would interrupt!_ The blasts were intensifying. _Were there just too many?_ The blasts were getting closer._ Could he simply just not handle this many adversaries?_ The blasts-_No._-were almost-_No!_-though-_NO!_

"PK Landslide!" The capper propelled whatever was left of his protection away, taking two of his foes with it. "PK Landslide!" He sent another one from the left, taking another two as well. "PK LANDLSIDE!" This was the last one, taking the final two opponents. The capper rushed after it.

The Landslides died down, leaving all the thugs in the same place. The gang members had all been thrown up against the wall of a building, prostrate and defenseless. Ness charged up to them, and as he did, he hated them. He hated their cruelty, their SENSLESS violence. He hated their PRIDE, their USELESS ARROGANCE. He hated the DEPRAVITY, the HARSHNESS, the UNFORGIVING. HE HATED-

"_**PK!"**_

-the World.

"_**FIRE!"**_

The flame leaped up with his rage, to burn forever more.

**SUSPENSE! At least, I hope so. This chapter was quite brutal, was it not? Well, I can't say I enjoyed writing it, but it is necessary for the plot to work. Next chapter won't be this harsh.o explain why this chapter took the ENTIRITY OF SUMMER to complete. First off, this chapter has extreme physiological importance, as I hope you could tell, and that requires that the reader get the exact right impression. That requires that everything written must be meticulously planned and studied so that it gives that impression. And that leads to writer's block. Also, summer, I have discovered, is the season of unexpected delays. I had this, that, that, and everything else pop up while trying to write this. And of course, that which I mentioned in the beginning notes: writing other things and vacations.**

**On to the replies!…which is one. Wow. I am really slow, aren't I?**

**TheMysticalQ: I got your PM, so I know the review was from you. Well, here you can see my attempt to make a shorter, 7-page-long chapter…I didn't do so well as it turned out to be 10. Yes, Ness is and will be taking a lot of initiative and Lucas will continue to get better. Aven I should hope will be an interesting character, and if he needs work as an OC, please let me know about it and I'll do my best to fix it. The last thing I want in this story is an annoying/overpowered/unpleasant OC. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, sorry it's only one POV. And as chapter 14, you can leave a signed review. ;)**

**Next chapter I'm going to try to have a scene with Lucas and a scene with Ness. Hopefully, they'll both get about half of the chapter, but we'll just have to see how it turns out.**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


	15. Author Explanation Note

Well, clearly this next chapter is taking quite awhile. Chapters 11 and 12 took about this long if not longer, but that's because they were both _**REALLY LONG**__, _particularly chapter 12. The next chapter is definitely not going to be that long, so…why is it taking me this long? Well, that's what I wrote this for.

No, I'm not overtly taking another break from writing like last year, but at times it might as well be. You see, soon after chapter 14 was completed, I finally got my hands on a Wii U (IT'S AWESOME). Needless to say, a brand new console has increased the time I've been spending playing video games, and while I cannot play that much it has still subtracted from the time I could spend writing. Even so, getting could still benefit the story as it is the most simple (and legal) way of playing Earthbound today. That's right; I'm actually going to play Earthbound! I'm going to get it after I finish Pikmin 3, though I'm not sure when exactly this will be (I still have Lego City Undercover to finish too). Undoubtedly, this will affect my vision for Onettsons a bit and help me answer some of your questions AWIRT!

But there are other reasons for the delay, the main one being school. Yes indeed, school has started back up again and it is harder than I anticipated. In fact, I just got through using the large majority of my free time this past weekend to finish a big project due yesterday. Luckily, I got a break from huge workloads today and had the time to write this, as well as work on Onettsons a little. Speaking of time off, when I do get it, I've been spending it on Youtube, video games, etc. because I've been feeling like I'd earned a chance to goof off. Despite that, I still think that I could spend more of that time on writing.

Another reason is that things have been coming up on days when I have free time: movies, special events, friends, family, and so forth. I'm not sure if they've been occurring with greater frequency lately, but it's another excuse.

Also, I've been having a rough time writing than before. Words don't flow as easily, and ideas don't come in as clearly. Now, there are two reasons for that. The first is that I didn't really know what I wanted to happen in this chapter, and my general ideas for it went through several different revisions. Thanks to some help from Maracta though, I've come up with an idea that has me extremely excited. I can also give YOU a reason to be extremely excited for the next chapter. **The next chapter is all about Lucas and only Lucas**. No POVs from any other characters are planned to be in chapter 15. I can't tell you much, but Lucas is about to have some unexpected things happen to him.

Secondly, writing has been tough for me because I think it's just a phase I'm going through. I think I've been more distracted in general as of late, and I hope that in time this will pass.

And my last reason for this chapter taking so long is that I'm trying to take a new approach to writing. I'd been stressing out over taking so long on this chapter, last chapter, basically every chapter since the summer of last year started, and when I consulted her, my mother told me it wasn't worth making myself miserable. And she's right. Although it wouldn't be good if I started to write only when I felt like it, I'm not going to try to write my chapters for the purpose of getting them out on a deadline. See, I'd like to be a professional writer, and Onettsons is a great way to prepare for that. So I'd probably still be writing this story even if I wasn't posting it on this site, just for the purpose of practice and expanding my writing abilities. So I'm going to write this story for the purpose of writing the story from now on, and not to get the next chapter out on Fanfiction before the month is out. Know that this doesn't mean that taking my sweet time will be okay with me, but I'm going to take a more relaxed approach to writing. Even still, a good writer doesn't take forever to get anything done, so I'll still be pushing myself. I hope this can result in a better writing experience for me, and a better reading experience for you.

Oh, and one more thing. I wanted to put a preview of chapter 15 in this, but it's not in that chapters best interest. It's shaping out to be something that should be read as a whole instead of in parts; it will be much more effective that way.

Well, sorry if this has turned out to be a bit of a depressing read for you, but I thought I should explain my absence. I hope you will bear with me, AWIRT, until the next chapter comes out. In light of that, I'm off to get a little work done on it!

Sincerely,

Nacartor of Cut Productions


	16. Goodbye For Now

**Hey AWIRT! Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? Yeah, well, we need to talk (if this counts as talking…).**

**Anywho, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed how long it's taken me to update recently. Well, as I've said before, writing has become harder and harder for me, and I've become increasingly worried about how the story is turning out and where it's going.**

**Also, one of the biggest problems is that I feel enormous amounts of pressure to write because of the thought that there are other people out there who are waiting to read the next chapter, and I'm not trying that hard to finish it. This has created guilt and, honestly, even insecurity, all of which becomes more noticeable when I actually try to sit down and write. There are other similar issues stemming from this, and it ends up with me wanting to write less and less because I don't really know how to enjoy it anymore. Thus, in a desire to get more writing done, I've ended up getting less writing done.**

**I've tried to alleviate the pressure by trying this and then that, and even my Zelda side-story. But sadly, nothing's helped. So, this has all led to the decision to stop posting my chapters to . Now, I haven't decided to stop writing; instead, I've decided to continue my writing without posting it online for all the world to see. Now, considering this should remove the pressure and not make me feel like I'm operating within a time frame, I believe this is in the best interests for myself and the story. For instance, I could flesh out the world of Onettsons and give the characters needed development.**

**I've decided against taking down what I've already uploaded to the site, as that would be needless and unfair. And I might eventually start uploading again someday, if things work themselves out. I even have an idea to rewrite previous chapters in order to take out what doesn't need to be there, add in details, and overall improve them. So, if you are interested, I would suggest to continue following this story. One day, you just might get a surprise in you inbox. However, we'll just have to see. **

**I'm almost done with another chapter in my previously-mentioned Zelda side-story, so I've decided I might as well upload that once it's finished. Besides that, I have no definite plans to upload anything else to . I'm very sorry to anyone who has been reading the story, but I'm afraid this is what's best. If you have anything to say to me, I'd love to hear it in a review and/or a PM. If not, that's fine. Lastly, I would like to thank anyone and everyone who has read Onettsons, whether fully or not, whether as a reviewer or not, whether as a critic or not. I really appreciate you taking time to read my strange little story, and perhaps have shared your thoughts, whatever they might have been. So, thank you for going on this rollercoaster with me. I hope this decision is what my writing needs, and I hope you guys enjoyed it on the way. God Bless.**

**This is Nacartor of Cut Productions, signing off.**


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